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

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

#771
On the FOSS front, I've been doing some minor things in TXR Lisp land.

Here is one:

When the random/rand functions are called with small moduli, well under 32 bits wide, they still draw a 32 bit word from the PRNG. I fixed that. Now the random state has a 32 bit shift register which it can load from the PRNG and take bits from it (in batches of 2, 4, 8 or 16).

There is a way to do this without any additional state other than that 32 bit word to indicate that the register has run out of bits.

We pretend that the register is 33 bits wide, giving it an indicator high bit that is always 1. Thus whenever the value drops to 1 or 0, it has to be reloaded. We cannot fit that indicator bit into the register, so what we do is: when we are reloading it with a fresh value, we immediately take bits we need from that value, shift it right, which creates the space for the bit. We then mask the bit in the right spot, depending on the shift size.

I worked on enhancing brace expansion in the glob* function. The regular glob* function has brace expansion if it is provided by the POSIX C library one, but the extended glob* has its own. I added numeric and string range expansion to it. It's better than the corresponding features in bash, because you can use more than one character, as in {AA..ZZ}. Also, if you use leading zeros in numeric ranges you get leading zeros in the output, as in {000..999}. The step sizes are supported.

Inspired by the step sizes in brace expansion, I added the same to range iteration:

  2> [map cons 0..10..2 "a".."z"..3]
  ((0 . "a") (2 . "d") (4 . "g") (6 . "j") (8 . "m"))
... and other stuff. There are a number of items remaining on the TODO list marked for next release.

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

#773

I'm working on a small project to bring plain-old-telephones back into our children's lives. Quick, screen-less connections with grandparents, cousins, and friends is as quick as picking up the phone and pressing one button. Imagine that. https://www.beanstalk.club/

Also consider the elder spectrum. As my father grows older with eye and coordination issues, he cannot use the intricacies of a smart phone.

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

#774
I'm working on a personal AI notebook called Lightpage.

I've always found it useful to have scratch notes about whatever's on my mind -- a mix of journaling/reflection, planning, project ideas, notes on things I'm reading, etc. But I wanted to be able to chat with an LLM that has full context & memory from these notes.

It's been surprisingly helpful for me and some of my friends! Some ways I've used it:

- Talking through fuzzy ideas & ideas to clarify them

- Having it re-inforce the healthy habits I want to build

- Using it to reflect on feelings or whatever's been bothering me

https://lightpage.com

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

#775
i've been working on a database management tui called rainfrog (https://github.com/achristmascarl/rainfrog). it supports postgres, mysql, and sqlite, and we recently added several new features such as: - favorites tab for frequently used queries - exporting query results to csv - configuring database connections in the config

feature requests and bug reports are appreciated!

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

#776
I'm building Magical.pm – an AI product management co-pilot.

Today, it generates clean, formatted product requirements from natural language and includes templates for different use cases (bug fixes, usability adjustments, etc.).

Soon, it will use RAG to incorporate knowledge of your system into the product requirements and perform inference on key down to help product managers write better specs with AI.

https://magical.pm

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

#777
I'm adding zsh shell completion to my CLI framework ( https://github.com/bbkane/warg/tree/bbkane/the-flattening-2-... )!

I'm writing bigger CLIs with it now and I want to tab through their subcommands and flags, as well as allow customization - suggest values for the current flag based on previous flags' values.

It's been a lot of work (9 months of quite limited side project time)- I had to rearchitect significant parts of the parsing to keep more state around, and learn how I want to approach communication with zsh, but I just need to add some tests and an option or two more and it'll be good enough for most CLIs I wrote.

Oddly enough, I'm procrastinating actually finishing it. I've really enjoyed the "grind" for this feature, and I'm also taking the time to clean up the API if I think of better versions. Being able to noodle around with no pressure (except internal) to deliver keeps the joy in programming going for me.

But, after this is done and integrated into my CLIs, I plan to take a left turn and try to add really good OTEL tracing and visualization to my CLIs- I think I can outut OTEL traces to log files and then embed logdy.dev subcommands for really nice searching and visualization.

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

#778
post #593

Working on [redacted], a Chrome extension to make YouTube more time-efficient (and way more fun). Its main differentiator: hover any thumbnail (homepage, search, shorts, etc.) for an instant mini-summary, like Wikipedia link previews. Also includes detailed summaries w/ timestamps, chat w/ video, chat w/ entire channels, and comment summaries. Hover & Detailed summaries are free if you plug in your own OpenAI API key…

nice! can you support safari?

Thanks! This may take awhile to be honest, but have added it to the list.

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

#779

i've been working on a database management tui called rainfrog ( https://github.com/achristmascarl/rainfrog ). it supports postgres, mysql, and sqlite, and we recently added several new features such as: - favorites tab for frequently used queries - exporting query results to csv - configuring database connections in the config feature requests and bug reports are appreciated!

How is rainfrog different from harlequin[0]

[0] https://github.com/tconbeer/harlequin

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

#780
Every now and then I add new touches to my hobby project at

https://nobsutils.com

It's a collection of small tools that run locally in your browser which, over time, I've built to serve my needs mostly. This has been living on my home NAS for a while. When I created the flashcards maker to help my 10 years old son prepare for a Spelling bee word quiz, it became popular with his schoolmates and I got some new drive to make it public.

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