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Hi HN!

Super proud to showcase Foqos! I wanted to create a way to physically block apps on my phone, always had a bunch of NFC tags, combined the 2 together over the holiday break and Foqos was born. You can create profiles, write them to NFC tags and track your weekly focus.

Its completely open source and will always be free! There is an affiliate link in the app for nfc tags and donations are completely optional

Link here: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/foqos/id6736793117

I've always been fascinated by thermal printers – there's something magical about seeing text and images materialize on paper in seconds. But I found that working with them programmatically was always a pain. You either had to deal with ancient printer protocols or use clunky vendor-specific SDKs. So I built Printercow (https://printercow.com) – it turns any thermal printer into an HTTP endpoint with just one command.

Technical details: - Supports any ESC/POS compatible printer (Epson, Star Micronics, etc.) - Handles paper widths from 58mm to 120mm - Automatic image dithering and scaling - Built-in failover protection for high-volume scenarios

Don't have a printer yet but want to try it out? I've got you covered! When you sign-up you get 300 free prints and you can watch your creations come to life on my printer via Twitch live stream (https://twitch.tv/printercow). Perfect for testing your integration before committing to hardware.

I'm particularly excited about the AI integration possibilities. Instead of yet another chat interface, you can have AI generate content that exists in the physical world – artwork, poems, todo lists, custom receipts, etc.

Would love to hear your thoughts, feature requests, or creative use cases you can think of! Also happy to answer any technical questions about the implementation.

BearingsOnly.net is a website that provides information and resources related to industrial bearings, including product guides, technical articles, and industry news. The site aims to serve as a comprehensive source for bearings-related knowledge and expertise.

This article discusses the development of Amurex, a new cryptocurrency exchange platform that aims to provide a secure and user-friendly trading experience. It highlights the platform's unique features, such as advanced security measures and a focus on regulatory compliance.

The article introduces Paper Golf, a digital version of the classic paper golf game. It describes the game's mechanics, where players take turns folding and cutting a sheet of paper to create the most compact final design.

Hi HN, I've been working on this Sudoku web app for the past couple of years, on and off during free weekends and afternoons. I started working on it because I was bored during COVID, and Cracking the Cryptic had just become popular on YouTube, which got me wondering how hard it could be to make a Sudoku app. The main idea is for the app to understand the constraints and know how to solve Sudoku grids (and not just be a simple Sudoku drawing/playing app). When it comes to classic Sudoku, the solver doesn't support anything more complicated than X-Wing, but it understands the constraints.

At the moment, most of the popular variants are supported: killer, sandwich, arrow, thermo, palindrome, German whisper, kropki, consecutive, non-consecutive, greater than, XV, diagonal, anti-king, anti-knight, even-odd, windoku, renban, and zipper. The only variant I am yet to add support for is quadruple. If any other variant becomes popular, I will probably add it, as was the case with zipper lines during development.

A user account is not required to play, but it is required if you want to publish a public grid on the app. The app doesn't collect any PII, doesn't have ads or trackers. Accounts are identified by email hash; I am not storing email addresses or passwords, and OTPs are sent by email. The less I know about users, the better for both sides.

The app supports mobile devices, but it works best on bigger screens. It was built using Blazor SSR/WASM (AOT) with SVG for interactive parts. I know there are some performance issues (especially on mobile phones and with touch input), and I am trying to address them.

Some of the features I was thinking about adding are classifying grids by difficulty, daily Sudoku, and maybe campaigns (groups of Sudoku grids where users have to solve them in order).

If you like Sudoku, or more specifically variants of Sudoku, please let me know what you think about SudokuVariants.

URL: https://sudokuvariants.com

Thanks!

Hey HN! I’ve built a free directory that lists and compares restaurant software (POS, inventory management, accounting, etc.). I run a small project on the side and realized how scattered the tools are, so I put them all in one place:

Any feedback is welcome, even if you’re not in the restaurant space—especially around UI, search functionality, or new features I could add.

I am an indie hacker and have been launching my products on Product Hunt. Like many of you here, my experience with PH sucked: Lots of bots. Hard to compete.

There's also been many new launch platforms coming up, but all of them make you compete for upvotes. Ugh.

So I have been working on something different: https://saascurate.com/

It's a community-driven platform where indie hackers and SaaS founders help each other grow their products.

The idea is simple - list your product, engage with other founders, gain exposure and social proof. No upvote system.

It's hard and expensive to turn a side project into a viable business, especially for solo makers, so my longterm vision is to be able to help founders grow their products in lots of different ways, like helping with cold outreach, partnerships and other channels.

I know there are a lot of "list your product and forget" platforms, so I am trying to build something different – where the community helps each other grow.

Let me know what you think! I'd love to hear your thoughts and see if this platform can help you grow your products.

Hi! Wanted to share the project I really wanted to have. TLDR; this app lets you create your own list of words and you get a Duolingo-like experience (kind of, still needs a lot of features) practicing those words in their context.

My English is not the best but not the worst either. But I realized I can't boost it up after a certain level! In my belief, in order to truly learn a language, you need to be exposed to that language often. Vocabulary is the key factor here if you really want to improve in any language.

My experience is that when I read a book to improve my English vocabulary, I encounter words that I don't know so often and my reading gets disturbed. I go look for the meaning, come back, put it in context, re-read it, etc. It didn't work for me. So I tried listening to audiobooks - I listen to the book and read along, and whenever I encounter a word, I write it down. I get these 50 words in 2-3 pages and I ask ChatGPT to give me their meanings. I read them, take the book, and now read it myself. That helps for sure, but still after a while I lose those words because I never encounter them again. Well then, in order to not forget those words, I need some kind of exercise, right? A flashcard app maybe? Well, I still need to go out there, ask ChatGPT to create questions, put them in a flashcard app, etc. It's still time-consuming and this is supposed to be fun!

I need to be exposed to English in my daily life. I just need to save the words somewhere and whenever I want, I need to be able to practice them in a fun way, in Duolingo style maybe? So then I realized would it be better to store words in their own context? I mean, say I read Harry Potter and have a list of words I encountered in it, say I watch Breaking Bad and have a list of words I encountered watching it. I believe seeing those words together and practicing together makes it easier to remember them.

But I shouldn't be the one adding the meaning of the word and the one to generate exercises, right? It all should be automated. The exercise part will be handled by LLM for sure, but for the meaning of the word, I can fetch from a dictionary? But I really don't like the dictionary definitions and one word can have multiple meanings in their own context. So then I need to use LLM for this task too and have the word's meaning in its own context.

You create a list for your context, you add words, meanings get added automatically, and I see the word added in a different color (coloring is also a method used to remember words). It all takes seconds. And whenever I want to practice these lists, I can use learn mode to learn and test my knowledge in quiz mode. So I basically built this app ((thanks to Claude 3.5 Sonnet)). I want it to be like Duolingo, but of course I still have a way ahead to go, but wanted to share it in hopes of getting contributors.

You can read more in the repository. I would love to get your thoughts on this.

fDeploy Server is a self-contained windows service, offering OpenAPI v3 compliant set of API endpoints and a built in web server which builds on the Microsoft's kernel-mode driver along with a web client, which serves as a central dashboard where project, environment, target and process management takes place. Use the built-in package repository with more to come.

Show HN: CloudCoil – Production-ready Python client for the cloud-native ecosystem

I built CloudCoil (https://github.com/cloudcoil/cloudcoil) to make cloud-native development in Python feel first-class, starting with a modern async Kubernetes client. Frustrated with existing tools that felt like awkward ports from Go/Java, I focused on creating an API that Python developers would actually enjoy using.

Installation is as simple as: uv add cloudcoil[kubernetes] # Using uv (recommended) pip install cloudcoil[kubernetes] # Using pip

Key features: - Elegant, truly Pythonic API that follows Python idioms - Async-first with native async/await (but sync works too!) - Full type safety with MyPy + Pydantic - Zero-config pytest fixtures for K8s integration testing

Quick taste of the API:

    # It's this simple to work with resources
    service = k8s.core.v1.Service.get("kubernetes")

    # Async iteration feels natural
    async for pod in await k8s.core.v1.Pod.async_list():
        print(f"Found pod: {pod.metadata.name}")

    # Create resources with pure Python syntax
    deployment = k8s.apps.v1.Deployment(
        metadata=dict(name="web"),
        spec=dict(replicas=3)
    ).create()

- cert-manager (cloudcoil.models.cert_manager) - FluxCD (cloudcoil.models.fluxcd) - Kyverno (cloudcoil.models.kyverno)

Missing your favorite operator? I've made it super easy to add new integrations using our cookiecutter template and codegen tools.

I'd especially love feedback on: 1. The API design - does it feel natural to Python devs? 2. Testing features - what else would make k8s testing easier? 3. Which operators/CRDs you'd most like to see integrated next

Check out https://github.com/cloudcoil/cloudcoil or try it out with PyPI: cloudcoil

Hi HN,

I’ve been building this provider for (web managed) network switches manufactured by HRUI. These switches often used in SMBs, home labs, and by budget-conscious enthusiasts. Many HRUI switches are also rebranded and sold under various OEM/ODM names (eg. Horaco, XikeStor, keepLiNK, Sodola, etc) making them accessible/popular but often overlooked in the world of infrastructure automation.

The provider is in pre-release, and I’m looking for owners of these switches to test it and share feedback. My goal is to make it easier to automate its config using Terraform/OpenTofu :)

You can use this provider to configure VLANs, port settings, trunk/link aggregation etc.

I built this provider to address the lack of automation tools for budget-friendly hardware. It leverage goquery and has an internal SDK sitting between the Terraform resources and the switch Web UI.

If you have one of these switches, I’d love for you to give it a try and let me know how it works for you!

    Terraform Registry: https://registry.terraform.io/providers/brennoo/hrui
    OpenTofu Provider: https://search.opentofu.org/provider/brennoo/hrui

hey! this is oliver and jonathan and today, we’re launching fixa — a free, open source package to test voice agents.

fixa uses a voice agent to call your voice agent and an LLM to evaluate how the conversation went. here's a demo: https://youtu.be/LAW1wW6SjTo

this was initially a paid feature of our platform, but the monetization model didn't really make sense.

our customers were paying us for all the components of our agent (STT + LLM + TTS + markup) in addition to their own agent – even though many of them have preferred vendors, volume discounts, and credits.

we came to the conclusion that you should be able to use your own API keys to test your own voice agents.

e2e testing for web apps is done using free and open source packages (selenium, puppeteer), we think the same should be true for voice.

running tests with fixa will always be free. we make money if you decide to use our cloud platform to visualize your test results.

fixa is still in the early stages, so we would appreciate any and all feedback!

Instead of playing video and trying to display timing information next to it, how about we build a simulation based on timing data and become able to determine the state of the race at any given point in time based on the few 'radar blips' of sector loop passes we have?

This is that. It takes the video and timing material of a 24h race (The IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship ROLEX24 at Daytona 2024) - 4 videos hosted on YouTube and a big CSV of laptimes and reimagines how a race replay might look like.

It comes with a few non-standard visualizations, and a lot of possibilities for navigation, including navigation based on race events such as flag states, overtakes, pit stops etc.

It's a zig program based on raylib running in the browser thanks to emscripten, with a bit of js glue code to control the YouTube player. Ultimately, controlling replays is just one of the goal features of the tech stack. Live-Timing, Live-broadcast, and broadcast of sim-racing are other application areas where I see this being beneficial.

Race fans, Enjoy, I know I certainly do!

pytest-evals is a Python testing framework that allows for the evaluation of expressions within test cases. It provides a simple way to check the expected output of expressions, making it useful for validating complex calculations or transformations in test suites.

Hi HN,

Founder here. We built Pica, an open-source platform in Rust to enable agentic AI with three main focus areas:

- Access to APIs and tools: Universal SDKs that let AI agents use thousands of external actions without blowing up your context window. - Visibility and traceability: Full audit logs of every decision/action to ensure transparency and accountability. - Alignment with human intentions: Seamless guardrails for autonomous tasks; e.g., restricting certain email actions to human approval.

Why this matters: As autonomy in AI grows, we need robust solutions for trust and oversight. Pica aims to empower developers with the building blocks for safe and capable agentic systems.

We’d love your feedback—check it out: https://hellopica.com/

If you find our project useful, consider giving us a on GitHub! It means the world to us and helps others discover our work. https://github.com/picahq/pica

Hey HN,

I’ve been curious about how different VCs stack up in terms of the number of investments they’ve made versus the number of exits (acquisitions, IPOs, etc.) they’ve seen. To satisfy that curiosity—and hopefully share something useful—I created a simple chart that compares VCs’ total investments against their exits.

Why I built this:

I was looking for a quick visual snapshot of which firms are most active and how many of their deals have led to notable exits.

While it’s not a definitive measure of a VC’s success, it’s still an interesting proxy, especially for anyone researching the track records of various funds.

Humbug is an open-source software tool that provides automatic bug detection and classification for large-scale software projects. It uses machine learning techniques to identify and categorize software bugs, helping developers efficiently address issues in their codebase.

Crawlspace is a centralized web crawling platform that benefits crawler developers AND website owners. Developers can affordably crawl tens of millions of pages per month, scrape with LLMs, and save data in attached storage. Website owners are shielded by a platform-wide TTL cache that absorbs redundant bot traffic.

AI bots are running rampant on the open web. Many recent HN stories[1][2][3][4] describe how web crawlers have run amok and hammer websites with DDoS-like traffic. They often do this with blatant disregard of website owners' wishes (e.g. ignoring robots.txt, 429s, Retry-After headers, etc) because they face no repercussions for deploying poorly-behaved crawlers (and are not incentivized to improve them).

The knee-jerk reaction to fix this problem is to give more tools to website owners. Maintaining denylists of IP addresses and user agents, implementing honeypots and tarpits, etc are tactics that website owners use to combat the problem. However, this ends up resulting in and endless arms race between web crawlers and website owners, as they each try to employ new mechanisms of one-upping each other.

Crawlspace takes a different approach _by providing a convenient and affordable platform to web crawler developers_. By funneling web crawling traffic through a centralized platform, we can control neat things like making crawlers well-behaved by default, implementing proper caching, and more — all the tedium that that developers don't want to (and therefore, don't) do themselves. Music streaming services like Spotify used convenience and affordability to curb music piracy; we're following the same playbook to curb rampant bot traffic on the internet.

In about 50 lines of code, you can deploy a performant and polite web crawler on Cloudflare's network. Every crawler gets its own queue, SQLite database, vector database, and S3-compatible bucket, which allows you to query your crawl as it's crawling with either SQL statements or a RAG chat interface. We've stitched together 10+ Cloudflare products including Queues, Durable Objects, Browser Rendering, Workers AI, D1, R2, and Vectorize.

Please let us know what you think! Happy to answer any questions.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42549624

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42660377

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42725147

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42750420

Hello HN!

Back in 2023, I introduced CFRS[], a minimalist drawing language with turtle graphics, featuring just six simple commands, through a "Show HN" post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37956065).

Since then, I've received a number of creative patterns and animations created using this tiny, esoteric language by the small and friendly community that has since formed around it. In this post, I intend to share some of these interesting creations with everyone to highlight the ingenuity of their creators. If you create an interesting demo using this language, please share it in the comments--I'd love to see it!

Demos contributed by various HNers: https://susam.github.io/cfrs/demo.html

Try CFRS[] here: https://susam.net/cfrs.html

Inspired by the "ffmpeg by examples" comments, here's a simple script that pulls it all together. Set your OpenAI API key env var and make the script executable, and you're golden.

The article introduces shllm, a shell-based language that offers a concise and expressive syntax for scripting tasks. It highlights shllm's ability to simplify common shell operations and provide a more readable and maintainable alternative to traditional shell scripts.

I was frustrated with traditional cargo cages- bulky, boring, the need for different kinds for different loads.

so I designed a new one, learning 3d printing, fusion360, and laser cutting along the way!

It is fun, hackable, versatile, minimal, and modular. And it can live on your bike without getting in the way.

Here is a direct link to configurations: https://hpa.xyz/pages/cargo-domino-configuration-ideas

Thanks!

Hello HN, Excited to share something we’ve been working on: a new way to connect buyers and sellers that flips the traditional ad model used by Google and Meta. We call it Offers. It’s built on three core principles: privacy, choice, and cash rewards.

How Offers Works * For Sellers: Create Offers with cash rewards to generate interest and boost visibility for your products or services.

* For Buyers: Choose the Offers that interest you and earn a cash reward for each click. In return, provide valuable feedback to the seller.

* Powered by Stripe Connect: Payments and transfers between buyers and sellers are seamless, secure, and fully transparent.

The Problem with AdTech Today’s $1 trillion AdTech industry is driven by a massive global surveillance system that tracks your every move online, continuously building a profile of your likes and dislikes. This data is then sold to companies to target you with personalized ads—without your informed consent.

A Better Way Offers removes the AdTech middleman, creating a direct, equitable, and transparent connection between buyers and sellers. No tracking. No hidden data collection. Just fair exchanges of value.

Why It Matters If you’re content with the current AdTech model, there’s no reason to read further. But if you’re curious about a more consumer-friendly future for digital advertising, we invite you to experience it for yourself. You can view a live Offer here and earn a $1.50 cash reward for your time:

https://sellff.com/$/ron.michel/offer/6Nu4M

We’re eager to hear your thoughts and feedback as we work to redefine digital advertising with privacy, choice, and cash rewards at its core. Join us in shaping the future of advertising. Thanks for your time!

I built this game to test out the MediaPipe hand-tracking API. Play brick breaker using your webcam + hand movement -- levels get progressively harder with faster speed / smaller paddle.

All processing is done in real-time within your browser. This project is built using javascript, html canvas, and mediapipe hand tracking.

This game is free and open source, offered under an MIT license.

Github repo: https://github.com/collidingScopes/manual-brick-breaker

Hope it's fun for you -- would love to hear feedback and suggestions for improvement.

I created a TUI for systemd/systemctl called isd (interactive systemd).

It provides a fuzzy search for units, auto-refreshing previews, smart sudo handling, and a fully customizable, keyboard-focused interface for power users and newcomers alike.

It is a more powerful (but heavier) version of sysz, which was the inspiration for the project.

This should be a huge timesaver for anybody who frequently interacts with or edits systemd units/services. And if not, please let me know why! :)

PKI, certificates, etc make digital signing a nightmare. With the evolution of passkeys (WebAuthN) and ID Tokens we managed to find a way of design a lightweight and scalable digital signing framework.

Hello HN!

Driven by the desire to avoid upgrading to the 2TB iCloud tier, I made a photo cleaning app for iOS that helps you systematically review your photos. While there are many similar apps, none of them checked all the boxes for what I wanted:

- Clear privacy guarantee that photos never leave your device

- Being honest about free limit usage. Some apps let you review photos only to reveal you can delete just a couple per day when you try to empty the trash. Basically taking your time hostage, when you've already gone through hundreds of photos

- Context for better decisions. A lot of the apps use swipe-based UIs that only show one photo at a time, making it hard/impossible to see surrounding photos to make a proper decision

- An enjoyable experience with features like zooming and sharing. You should be able to have fun and relive your memories, given you are already doing the tedious task of going through hundreds of photos

I hope that these factors illustrate why I decided to enter this crowded space with my own take. Thank you for your time, and if you consider giving it a look, I would definitely appreciate any feedback.

Tony

I used the YOLO object detection library from Ultralytics to scan over 40 million hotel photos and identify images with office chairs. This helped me create a map showing hotels suitable for remote work.

Map: https://www.tripoffice.com/maps

Yolo: https://www.ultralytics.com/yolo

The whole process was done on a home Mac without the use of any LLMs. It's based on traditional object detection technology.

The article discusses a new GUI tool for editing Mermaid class diagrams, which allows users to create and modify class diagrams visually without having to write code. The tool provides a user-friendly interface and features like real-time diagram previewing, making it easier for non-technical users to work with Mermaid diagrams.