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

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651–660 of 1001 posts

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

#652
On and off, I am currently coding a minimal wayland compositor for linux and AMD GPU(no libdrm), in RISC-V assembly (64bits), which I run on x86_64 with a small RISC-V machine code interpreter written itself in x86_64 assembly. I do not use ELF, but a file format (excrutiatingly simple as such file format type should be on modern hardware architectures) of my own with an ELF capsule (also written in x86_64 assembly).

I start with SHM memory, will add linux dma-buf once SHM is enough up and running. Currenty monothreaded, ofc. AMD GPU code for SHM is in, now writting wayland protocol code to please the first wayland clients I would like to run (not using the C libraries provided by the wayland project, native wire format).

I want to move away from x11, and once I get something decent with this compositor, I will probably have to fork xwayland in order to make it work with this minimal compositor, that for some level of legacy compatibility (steam client/some games).

In the end, I did design some kind of methodology and coded some SDK tools in order to write a bit more comfortably RISC-V machine code programs in a very simple fire format (only core ISA, not even compressed instructions, no pseudo instructions, using only a simple C preprocessor).

Coding time does not matter on such software in the light of their life cycle once it does "happen".

All that presuming not too much IRL interference... yeah, I know this is excessive to expect that...

The super hard part is not coding, it is motivation: energy, mood, cognitive bias, etc.

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

#654
https://github.com/continusec/htvend/

htvend is a tool to help you capture any internet dependencies needed in order to perform a task.

It builds a manifest of internet assets needed, which you can check-in with your project.

The idea being that this serves as an upstream package lock file for any asset type, and that you can re-use this to rebuild your application if the upstream assets are removed, or if you are without internet connectivity.

Has an experimental GitHub action to integrate within your GitHub build, archiving assets to S3.

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

#655

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blazingban... Completely free, no ads, no in-app purchases and no accounts / network required offline voice transcription. I have also built the macOS/Windows/Linux versions which I'll also make free to download and available on my site soon ( https://blazingbanana.com/ ). iOS version is built and works (extremely well), just waiting for the Apple Developer signup pro…

I just tried running this on a 30 minute meeting with some 10 people in. It got to the end, then just bailed without transcribing. I also did not get any errors or anything.

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

#656
post #570

I'm working on https://techposts.eu - Hacker News for Europe. Focused on all the interesting and exciting happenings in tech here, from AI to defence to deeptech, and posting the most interesting job openings too. Did you know Europe had two space launch startups? I didn't until I started this project! Feedback very welcome :)

First post:

> Show TP: TreatyHopper - Pay less taxes

> Treaty shopping is a tax strategy where companies route profits through intermediary countries with favorable tax treaties to minimize overall tax liability.

Can't make this up x)

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

#658
http://mikeinnes.io/posts/advent-2025/

I've been working through advent of code using my own little compiler/language. It's in such an early state that some creative problem solving is required, not to mention the compiler bugs! But I'm very pleased to have it running interactively on my blog like this – I want to work towards some bigger notebooks in the style of explorable explanations.

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

#660
I've been working (very slowly) on a cross-platform UI library written in C. It uses as much as it can from the OS without outright using the native widgets for everything. Rather the focus is on letting the user of the library customize the look of the controls as they see fit.

It's unfortunate but native UI (as in, using the native controls with their native look) has mostly died off in my opinion, at least for complex cross-platform applications.

You can try to do it in a cross-platform manner but it never works well. Want to implement a tab bar like VSCode's? Win32 tab bars do not support close buttons (need to be custom rendered) and Cocoa tabs it doesn't even make sense for them to have a close button. In Cocoa you're supposed to use either the windowing system to do tabs (similar to Safari tabs) or custom render everything (like iWork).

So I say screw it, make it look as you wish.

The design of the API is somewhat DOM inspired (everything is built up of divs that can be styled). It's pure retained mode for now, I still need to think how I'll make reactivity work.

On macOS it uses a custom NSView to implement "divs". Drawing is done with CoreAnimation layers. Text editing is handled by a nested a NSTextView control with a transparent background. Could also host a web view in a similar manner. Context menus are native.

On Windows it uses a custom C++ class that stores Windows.UI.Composition surfaces for drawing (could also use DirectComposition + Direct2D). Text editing is handled by a windowless RichEdit control (ITextHost/ITextServices). Context menus are native Win32.

On Linux it uses a custom QWidget with a nested QTextEdit control for text editing. I'm thinking of experimenting with Qt Quick for hardware accelerated rendering like the other two.

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