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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)

#831

I dusted off an old app (2012 or so) that I wrote for me and my girlfriend who are in a long-distance relationship which I call "Date Night Movie Player". It needs updates and she mentioned that she missed using it. Basically it lets two people sync watching a video/movie together, while chatting in a side transparent overlay and has a remote control with interesting buttons like timed "beer break", "bathroom break",…

I had this usecase, Ended up using google meet and screensharing.

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

#832

I'm working on AssetRoom, a free service to email you noise-free, easy to digest summaries of SEC filings from companies you're interested in. I often read about interesting public companies (from an investment perspective or otherwise), but fail to then keep up with them over time (sometimes reading many months/years later how successful they were - or not!). I built this to make an easy way for me to follow updates…

Looks nice, my only initial nit is to change “twitter” to “x” in the footer, some people get very touchy about that haha

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

#833

Finishing up my PhD thesis on low-resource audio classification for ecoacoustics. Our partners deployed 98 recorders in remote Arctic/sub-Arctic regions, collecting a massive (~19.5 years) dataset to monitor wildlife and human noise. Labeled data is the bottleneck, so my work focuses on getting good results with less data. Key parts: - Created EDANSA [1], the first public dataset of its kind from these areas, using a…

oh man that's awesome. I have been working for quite some time on big taxonomy/classification models for field research, espec for my old research area (pollination stuff). the #1 capability that I want to build is audio input modality, it would just be so useful in the field-- not only for low-resource (audio-only) field sensors, but also just as a supplemental modality for measuring activity out of the FoV of an image sensor.

but as you mention, labeled data is the bottleneck. eventually I'll be able to skirt around this by just capturing more video data myself and learning sound features from the video component, but I have a hard time imagining how I can get the global coverage that I have in visual datasets. I would give anything to trade half of my labeled image data for labeled audio data!

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

#835
I'm working on a PostScript interpreter. This is a retirement project. I wanted something substantial to sink my teeth into without any commercial pressure. I wanted to see if I could get back that intrinsic motivation that I for had for programming before I started my career. Back in the eighties I worked for the QMS distributor in the UK, QMS were Adobe's second OEM after Apple and made a range of PostScript printers. I was working in support at the time and would never have thought of taking on a project like this.

I have an original Apple LaserWriter which I can use through the serial port (but it won't print). I've pulled the ROM's in it and got them working through the MAME game emulator. This is great as I can debug the 68000 code, for instance I was able to reverse engineer the random number generator and the password for internaldict. Ghostscript is handy as well although I try not to rely on it too much as there are some differences between the two implementations.

The plan is to keep it as close as possible to the LaserWriter so that means level 1. PostScript is quite interesting in that it starts executing PostScript code as soon as you power on the printer. That code is responsible for initialising the printer, handling errors, managing the serial ports then receiving and executing the incoming PostScript job. You can load and dump this internal code with a simple script.

The interpreter is complete along with the 125 programming operators, core types and error handlers. The next stage is the graphics operators. I'm going to target PDF for output as the drawing model is the same as PostScript. I'm assuming that handling the fonts is going to be the bulk of the work.

It's written in Rust, so far about 14,000 lines and 650 unit tests. In some ways it would have been easier in C as I could have followed the exact memory layout in the original interpreter however I really dislike C.

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

#836

Japan Top 100 (restaurants) app https://apps.apple.com/us/app/japan-top-100/id6741251616 Only public on iOS store for now, due to Google requires larger # of testers to authenticate the app. This app idea came from my last Japan trip. I had a hard time finding good local restaurants (not tourist traps). So I decided to build this app with Japanese-oriented lists, due to lists' lacked of maps, etc. The app actually he…

Unfortunately I don't have an iPhone to try when we go to Japan but I will ask my friend to try it out. We will travel to Japan later this year.

Will let you know once android version is public

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

#837
Working on ʻŌlelo Honua, a free and open-source internationalization (i18n) tool that uses AI to translate app content. Now building a CLI so it can integrate seamlessly with tools like Shopify and other platforms. The goal is to make localization effortless for developers without relying on expensive translation services.

https://www.olelohonua.com

Would love feedback—especially on CLI features you'd find useful!

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

#838
I've been thinking about hobby projects I can work on in retirement (in a few years) that have a large scope that I would find fun. So, I've started work on a game development library in C that combines a few projects I've started over the years but never finished. It's not very far yet.

I'm building the 2d parts of it in the GLFW library and modern OpenGL (this will eventually also be used as an overlay system when I get to the 3d portions of the project). I'm also adding in simple text menuing so I can quickly build text prototypes of the games so I can also be working on game data structures and basic mechanics while the graphical engine comes together.

So far I've started two basic games, an old school rogue-like on a large scale using tiles and a similar game that combines factory building with the rogue-like parts. I have plans to bring in some other games that will stretch different parts of the engine.

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

#839
post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not be negative about bestfreevoice, or any other invoicing tool, but it always seems like developers and early-stage entrepreneurs don't understand invoicing. First major disconnect is that not every country uses invoices, but may use receipts instead. This is true for the USA for example, so many US devs (for example: Stripe in the early days) are not familiar with the concept of invoicing. Technically there is no…

In Italy, many of these invoicing challenges have already been tackled through a nationwide standardized system. Every invoice—whether B2B or even B2C (receipts included)—must be sent electronically using a government-defined XML format. This invoice includes predefined metadata and is digitally signed by the issuing party. Once ready, it gets submitted to the national tax agency’s centralized system, called the Sist…

> Every invoice—whether B2B or even B2C (receipts included)—must be sent electronically using a government-defined XML format

So not a universal standard then. Imagine having to implement a different format for every country you do business with...

For the Netherlands there is a similar (but slightly different I believe) XML type format required if you want to do business with the government. Initially a company successfully lobbied to get their closed-specification version to be the mandated standard for government, to get the XML spec you had to become partner (I believe for €8k/year or something).

Luckily they are now performing a XKCD 927 and have defined a few new (this time open) standards, which they aim to consolidate into a new spec that complies to EN 16931. EN 16931 is the EU compliance standard for e-invoicing.

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

#840
I have 2 fronts actually:

1. Hardware a. Trying to create my own mechanical keyboard: already modeled, how finding a suitable printer. b. Waiting for a display to arrive so I can wire into my digital calendar. c. Waiting my modem HAT to arrive to go to phase 2 of my self hosted server.

1. Software a. Preparing my next blog post. b. Working on my distro.

References:

- Blog: https://blog.terminal.pink - Distro: https://terminal.pink/lin0/tree/index.html

NB: I know my certificate expired.

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