Show HN: I Built an iOS app to locate stray animals https://ift.tt/plMvqGB

Show HN: I Built an iOS app to locate stray animals https://ift.tt/Uy83TnR https://ift.tt/UfXJwhm March 18, 2025 at 03:35AM

Show HN: Cascii – A portable ASCII diagram builder written in vanilla JavaScript https://ift.tt/SIt593i

Show HN: Cascii – A portable ASCII diagram builder written in vanilla JavaScript 3 months ago I wanted to draw an ASCII diagram to include in some documentation at work. I found the few tools online to be insufficient, and was suprised there wasn't a more complete tool to get the job done. Since, I've built Cascii from scratch in vanilla Javascript (I'm not an FE dev, it might be obvious...). I hope it works alright. Please check out the live version at https://cascii.app , report problems, make diagrams to improve your code's documentation. Hope you enjoy using it. https://ift.tt/a8ER3uZ March 16, 2025 at 03:32PM

Show HN: OpenTimes – Free travel times between U.S. Census geographies https://ift.tt/XCg7PFS

Show HN: OpenTimes – Free travel times between U.S. Census geographies Hi HN! Today I'm launching OpenTimes, a free database of roughly 150 billion pre-computed, point-to-point travel times between United States Census geographies. In addition to letting you visualize travel isochrones on the homepage, OpenTimes also lets you download massive amounts of travel time data for free and with no limits. The primary goal here is to enable research and fill a gap I noticed in the open-source spatial ecosystem. Researchers (social scientists, economists, etc.) use large travel time matrices to quantify things like access to healthcare, but they often end up paying Google or Esri for the necessary data. By pre-calculating times between commonly-used research geographies (i.e. Census) and then making those times easily accessible via SQL, I hope to make large-scale accessibility research cheaper and simpler. Some technical bits that may be of interest to HN folks: - The entire OpenTimes backend is just static Parquet files on R2. There's no RDBMS or running service. The whole thing costs about $10/month to host and is free to serve. - All travel times were calculated by pre-building the inputs (OSM, OSRM networks) and then distributing the compute over hundreds of GitHub Actions jobs. - The query/SQL layer uses a setup I haven't seen before: a single DuckDB database file with views that point to static Parquet files via HTTP. Finally, the driving times are optimistic since they don't (yet) account for traffic. This is something I hope to work on in the near future. Enjoy! https://opentimes.org March 18, 2025 at 02:10AM

Show HN: A nice website Visual Theme Editor for tailwind/shadcn https://ift.tt/wo3cxYU

Show HN: A nice website Visual Theme Editor for tailwind/shadcn https://tweakcn.com March 17, 2025 at 11:41PM

Show HN: 10 teams are racing to build a pivotal tracker replacement https://ift.tt/srBemOG

Show HN: 10 teams are racing to build a pivotal tracker replacement A lot has changed since the shutdown of pivotal tracker was discussed here. As there were no viable alternatives it seems every month there was a new project popping up. With the last month before the sunsetting approaching, it starts to get exciting who will make it in time, who stays in the race and what the differentiating features of the projects will be. https://bye-tracker.net March 16, 2025 at 07:00PM

Show HN: Nash, I made a standalone note with single HTML file https://ift.tt/VuIAPrC

Show HN: Nash, I made a standalone note with single HTML file Hello HN, I hope it will posted as well. I made a note in single html file. This does not require a separate membership or installation of the software, and if you download and modify an empty file, you can modify and read it at any time, regardless of online or offline. It can be shared through messengers such as Telegram, so it is also suitable to share contents with long articles and images. It is also possible to host and blog because it is static html file content. https://ift.tt/uLDGbYp March 14, 2025 at 07:21AM

Show HN: Kill SaaS with Open Source https://ift.tt/arBPtuY

Show HN: Kill SaaS with Open Source KillSaaS is my answer to subscription software in the AI era. I'm building this because I believe small teams can use modern AI tools to create free alternatives to giants like Figma and DocuSign in weeks, not years. We're creating a platform where developers vote on which SaaS to replace, then build it together as open source. wdyt? https://ift.tt/SFv1kD2 March 16, 2025 at 02:50AM

Show HN: Basic Memory – Build a knowledge graph from Claude conversations https://ift.tt/Zk4T6hI

Show HN: Basic Memory – Build a knowledge graph from Claude conversations Basic Memory is an open-source tool that enables Claude to build and navigate a persistent knowledge graph based on your conversations. It solves the problem of lost context in AI interactions by storing knowledge in standard Markdown files on your computer. I built this because I found myself constantly repeating information to LLMs and wanted a system where my knowledge grew naturally through conversations while maintaining complete control over my data. Demo video: https://ift.tt/Wro260L Key features: - Continue conversations exactly where you left off without repetition - All knowledge stays in local Markdown files you can edit anytime - Works with Claude Desktop via the Model Context Protocol - Seamless integration with Obsidian for visualization and editing - Fully open source (AGPL) The system works by creating structure from simple markdown patterns: - Observations with categories: `- [category] fact #tag` - Relations between documents: `- relation_type [[WikiLink]]` or plain `[[Wikilinks]]` - These patterns emerge naturally during conversations When you chat with Claude, you can simply say "Let's continue our conversation about X" and it will build context from your knowledge base, without needing to upload files every time. GitHub: https://ift.tt/zl2Jh7p Docs: https://ift.tt/ZilP43J Website: https://ift.tt/ivmG9A3 Requires Claude Desktop or other MCP host and Python 3.12+ I'd love feedback from the HN community, particularly from those interested in knowledge management or AI applications. https://ift.tt/zl2Jh7p March 15, 2025 at 11:49PM

Show HN: Web Audio Spring-Mass Synthesis https://ift.tt/0UlPEAy

Show HN: Web Audio Spring-Mass Synthesis Hi, I'm the author of this little Web Audio toy which does physical modeling synthesis using a simple spring-mass system. My current area of research is in sparse, event-based encodings of musical audio ( https://blog.cochlea.xyz/sparse-interpretable-audio-codec-pa... ). I'm very interested in decomposing audio signals into a description of the "system" (e.g., room, instrument, vocal tract, etc.) and a sparse "control signal" which describes how and when energy is injected into that system. This toy was a great way to start learning about physical modeling synthesis, which seems to be the next stop in my research journey. I was also pleasantly surprised at what's possible these days writing custom Audio Worklets! https://blog.cochlea.xyz/string.html March 15, 2025 at 02:57AM

Show HN: Psyllium, a Ruby Gem to make Fibers behave more like Threads https://ift.tt/kZtDHCf

Show HN: Psyllium, a Ruby Gem to make Fibers behave more like Threads Hi everyone! I created this small Ruby Gem to add some convenient methods to the Fiber class to make it easier to use in the same way a Thread object can be used. This was born out of my frustration that the current implementation of the Fiber class makes it difficult to retrieve the final value of a block passed to a Fiber, especially when creating a fiber via the `schedule` class method. I appreciate any feedback anyone has. https://ift.tt/djWysTY March 15, 2025 at 12:09AM

Show HN: OCR Benchmark Focusing on Automation https://ift.tt/UVXqyzC

Show HN: OCR Benchmark Focusing on Automation OCR/Document extraction field has seen lot of action recently with releases like Mixtral OCR, Andrew Ng's agentic document processing etc. Also there are several benchmarks for OCR, however all testing for something slightly different which make good comparison of models very hard. To give an example, some models like mixtral-ocr only try to convert a document to markdown format. You have to use another LLM on top of it to get the final result. Some VLM’s directly give structured information like key fields from documents like invoices, but you have to either add business rules on top of it or use some LLM as a judge kind of system to get sense of which output needs to be manually reviewed or can be taken as correct output. No benchmark attempts to measure the actual rate of automation you can achieve. We have tried to solve this problem with a benchmark that is only applicable for documents/usecases where you are looking for automation and its trying to measure that end to end automation level of different models or systems. We have collected a dataset that represents documents like invoices etc which are applicable in processes where automation is needed vs are more copilot in nature where you would need to chat with document. Also have annotated these documents and published the dataset and repo so it can be extended. Here is writeup: https://ift.tt/HYWFhLM Dataset: https://ift.tt/maULqoy Github: https://ift.tt/UsBieTE Looking for suggestions on how this benchmark can be improved further. https://ift.tt/HYWFhLM March 13, 2025 at 02:19AM

Show HN: Psychedelic animation generator; (p)art of your next trip https://ift.tt/imtNKw6

Show HN: Psychedelic animation generator; (p)art of your next trip Sharing an open source project for creating psychadelic art -- using liquid motion, distorted shapes, shadows and light. This tool works in real-time in the browser using webgl shaders. This project was inspired by drum & bass / acid techno music, and 90s rave posters. Use this to create art for a music video, concert posters, stylized animations in creative projects, or simply to enjoy alongside some fine music. Use the detailed control menu (top-right) to set a custom canvas size, adjust animation speed, control pattern and colours, etc... You can export your creation as an image or video afterwards. How this works: this tool uses WebGL shaders to create a real-time animation (with a trippy liquid / shadow / blur aesthetic). The animation is created using a random seed position and mixes in random noise (fractal brownian motion, 3D simplex noise), so each time you re-run it you're creating a unique piece of art. Github repo: https://ift.tt/4sz5p0n ----- I hope you enjoy the visuals. I'd love to hear any feedback or suggestions. https://ift.tt/7GUrySR March 14, 2025 at 04:56AM

Show HN: Bypass DEI Censorship https://ift.tt/W50v3Td

Show HN: Bypass DEI Censorship https://ift.tt/h6MGYP1 March 14, 2025 at 02:53AM

Show HN: Tinygym: RL in Tinygrad https://ift.tt/THy1eE4

Show HN: Tinygym: RL in Tinygrad Hi there, the repo speaks for itself. Feedback & questions are welcome https://ift.tt/mGX5Cgc March 13, 2025 at 11:31PM

Show HN: Simple Turn Servers for WebRTC – 5GB Free, $0.20/GB After https://ift.tt/XEeHrW9

Show HN: Simple Turn Servers for WebRTC – 5GB Free, $0.20/GB After https://turnwebrtc.com/ March 13, 2025 at 04:27AM

Show HN: CatCompass – An app for tracking stray cats https://ift.tt/yOsuli0

Show HN: CatCompass – An app for tracking stray cats https://catcompass.com March 13, 2025 at 03:40AM

Show HN: Time Portal – Get dropped into history, guess where you landed https://ift.tt/bNFEPC8

Show HN: Time Portal – Get dropped into history, guess where you landed Hi HN! I love imagining the past, so I made Time Portal, a game where you are dropped into a historical event and see AI video footage from that moment. You have to guess where you are in time and on the map. It’s like GeoGuessr (and heavily inspired by it!) but for historical events. The videos are all created with AI. It’s a pipeline of Flux (images), Kling (video), and mmaudio (audio). The videos aren’t always historically accurate to the last detail. They might incorporate elements of folklore or have details from popular beliefs about the way things looked rather than the latest academic research on how they looked. I’m thinking a lot about how to make the game more interactive. One thing that makes Geoguessr so fun for me is that you can move infinitely and always find more details to help you pinpoint the location. I want Time Portal to have a similar quality. I have a few ideas to try soon that will hopefully make the game more interactive and infinite. https://ift.tt/VSK6NTW March 13, 2025 at 01:53AM

Show HN: Daylight – track sunrise / sunset times in your terminal https://ift.tt/6OpYaN4

Show HN: Daylight – track sunrise / sunset times in your terminal https://ift.tt/Dgw8WHa March 9, 2025 at 05:51PM

Show HN: AI-powered root cause analysis with the Five Whys method https://ift.tt/KhWwTvk

Show HN: AI-powered root cause analysis with the Five Whys method https://ift.tt/ardsPuM March 12, 2025 at 07:16AM

Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls https://ift.tt/LBGrnVc

Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls Hi HN! I’m Cole Ashman, founder of Pila Energy. I’ve spent my career working on home energy systems—first as an engineer on Tesla’s Powerwall, where I focused on the Backup Gateway, Solar Inverter, and metering systems. More recently, I led Product at SPAN, where we built the Smart Electrical Panel and integrated with most major home solar, EV, and battery systems. Pila ( https://pila.energy/ ) is a home battery that plugs into a standard wall outlet, provides smart backup power, energy shifting, and grid services. It’s more than a power bank—it’s a distributed energy system that can scale across multiple rooms, entire buildings, and work together in real time as a coordinated system. We built Pila to be local first with an open API to allow developers to build use cases on top of our hardware (Home Assistant, etc). Big batteries like Tesla Powerwall and Enphase are great if you own a home and can afford a $10K+ electrical project, but they require permanent installation, electricians, and panel upgrades—which makes them inaccessible for renters, apartments, and cost-conscious homeowners. Over 50% of the cost of installing a Powerwall isn’t even the battery itself—it’s soft costs: labor, permitting, etc. We wanted to create an entry point for more people to access energy security at home. How does it work? Plug Pila into any 120V wall outlet, and power passes through to connected devices and appliances. The inverter, LFP battery, BMS, grid disconnection, controller, and wireless connectivity are all built in. (details at https://ift.tt/8MOVGFA ) When an outage happens, the onboard inverter detects the power loss within 20ms and automatically disconnects from the grid (islanding). Whether you’re home or away, backup kicks in instantly. A built-in cellular radio ensures you get a notification even if your home WiFi is out. Pila is 1.6kWh. That will backup a standard fridge for over a day. One key challenge we faced with a distributed architecture was coordination between batteries, for things like solar-following and managing real-time draw from your utility connection. Unlike large garage systems, where you can run a wired CAN bus, our batteries are spread across the home. We’re solving this with a sub-GHz wireless mesh network—self-healing, coordinator-less, and designed to make setup and expansion as simple as plugging in another unit. Long-term, we’d love to open up this protocol to provide a more reliable communication layer for energy products in noisy built environments—reducing reliance on consumer Wi-Fi. We want to deliver the value you’d expect from a whole-home battery like Powerwall, in a plug-in format. That means going beyond a basic lead acid UPS with real home energy management, useful insights about power use, power larger loads like sump pumps, and even deliver grid services. Most portable batteries are missing the functionality that makes a home battery useful: no bidirectional power, no integration with solar or smart home systems, and no ability to manage home energy dynamically. They tend to be boxy, ruggedized, meant to be moved around, not seamlessly integrated into your living space. On top of that, many use e-mobility battery chemistries, which are great for delivering high power on demand but wear out faster when cycled daily for home energy use. As a renter myself, I started Pila because these awesome energy products aren’t accessible enough. And frankly, generators are loud, expensive, and a pain to deal with. Even many Powerwall owners I’ve talked to say they really care about keeping the fridge, WiFi, and a sump pump running—so why does energy resilience have to be so complicated and expensive? As the grid struggles to keep up with demand, we believe modular, renter-friendly batteries can make home energy resilience more accessible. What's been your experience with home batteries? What recent power outages have you had, and how were you affected? https://pilaenergy.com March 11, 2025 at 09:18PM