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Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

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Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

#301
I am working on a babelfish ie speech-to-speech language translation for use during vacations namely Tokyo Disneyland where you can't ask the speaker to stop speaking. I am kind of surprised that it does not exist yet. I want it to be like this this video where the app/device talks in English in realtime over the Japanese speaker https://youtu.be/PfPC4KEdTDY?si=h4BfmkNvQnmOzvgC&t=62 however I found no iOS app that can do this yet, they all require the speaker to stop speaking before translating. I know Google translate can live speech-to-text but I'm wondering if I can achieve speech-to-speech with earbuds and a shotgun microphone so I don't have to look at my phone. and there's new iOS on-device models so I'm hoping I can get better offline accuracy

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

#303
For fun, I am building a little tool called 'domain-manager'. Basically just a binary that automates configuring a Linux host to run a bunch of WordPress/Laravel/PHP sites.

It creates all the necessary boilerplate to generate PHP Docker containers, creates all of the MySQL users, and sets up all of the directory structures to get a new website up and running. It even helps set up SFTP users and gets letsencrypt certificates set up with certbot.

It's still very early days, but I appreciate that what used to be a bunch of commands that I would run by hand and slightly change every few months is now pretty much just all self contained. Should mean the next migration to a different server is easier.

Created in frustration because I was too cheap to pay the $50/month for a cPanel license.

https://github.com/timgws/domain-manager

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

#304
I built a hardware server monitor with LED display based on the ESP8266. I needed 8 fewer things to think about in the morning. If you want, you can build one yourself, I released the hardware and firmware: https://github.com/seanboyce/servermon

Next up is a small lamp for migraines. I noticed that dim red light is much more tolerable to me than anything else. I mean obviously, darkness is ideal, but you need to do other stuff like eat and drink eventually if it's a persistent one.

So I designed a quick circuit to use fast PWM (few Mhz, so no flicker) to control a big red LED. I'd like it to be sturdy and still functional in 50-100 years, so made some design choices for long-term durability. No capacitors, replaceable LED and so on.

A simple project, but it's a busy month and I need something easy this time.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

#305
My background is in NLP, research, and startups. I joined a power company where I saw a clear opportunity to use AI for automating equipment inspection from drone images.

But the environment made it hard to move fast. The systems were outdated, and there wasn’t much support for building AI tools in-house. That experience made me realize I needed to grow beyond the modeling layer. There were things I wanted to build, but I didn’t yet have the full skill set to do it on my own.

So I’ve been learning full stack development. I had built a small chatbot app before, but this time I’m applying what I’m learning toward a focused MVP for the inspection work. It’s been a practical way to connect what I know with what I want to make real.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

#308
https://inlovingmem.com/ - is a tribute to my recently deceased mom that I vibe coded over the last week. I felt her life deserved to be celebrated widely but wanted to be sensitive to her privacy. I've also built in a number of interactive features for participation in funeral services etc, before, during, and after.

Folks have reached out about having an 'In Loving Memory Of' site for their loved ones, so I'm turning this into a side business to help out more with my (now widowed) father's retirement and care.

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