Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026) • Hacker News Board

brynnbee wrote: post #502

My two biggest projects are: https://www.idlequest.net/ - a from-scratch recreation of the 1999 MMORPG classic EverQuest, featuring a real-time MMO server written in Go, a 3D game browser-based client built with Babylon.js, and the clasic UI recreated using React. You can play it both as a regular MMORPG but also in "idle mode" where it basically plays itself. This had up to 70 players online at once a while back whi…

That Shenmue MMO is a phenomenal effort. Who would have thought a hobbyist would launch Shenmue Online before Yu Suzuki :D

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

#985

Post by james_hsiao » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 12:27 PM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

#986

Post by james_hsiao » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 12:37 PM UTC

taylorfinley wrote: post #137

I got laid off at the end of April and have been building my own personal dream tool since, it's a skeuomorphic carpentry simulator with an agent MCP. You start with real wood specs and a shop full of miter saws, router tables, table saws and the like. Think of it like Sketchup but no extruding rectangles. It's been really fun to build with. Agents can create parametric procedures so e.g. stick framing becomes a simp…

Just tried it. This looks amazing! Quick question: how does it handle realistic material waste or blade kerf when generating the cut plan?

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

#987

Post by olpad » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 12:46 PM UTC

Jacques2Marais wrote: post #688

I've been working on a vocal pitch-and-time editor called PitchDance, something like Melodyne. It works both as standalone software or a plug-in for your DAW. The idea is to make software like this more accessible by selling at a much cheaper price than the majors, and only competitors I could find on the market. https://www.pitchdance.com/ Btw, currently I'm looking for some people to test the software, so if you're…

I would suggest investing a little time in your website UI, it screams LLM generated right away and I can’t get an immediate sense of what the actual UI might look like right away. I really like the first animation but it’s unclear if that’s what the UI is or if that’s just a pitch correction generic animation.

Just a little bit of human-touch design in the website could go a long way towards the trust of the software. For example melodyne’s website shows me their (arguably outdated) UI right on the main page. I already know what they do as most will with a pitch correction software, so they just have a short blurb, an image of their actual product, and some links. Not saying you should copy this exactly, but if I’m looking around for something other than the industry standard I need to know I can trust it and I need to know what it looks like without downloading it first.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

#988

Post by Santas » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

I’ve always had the same problem with website blockers: I might need YouTube for a tutorial related to what I’m working on, but allowing YouTube also means allowing every unrelated video. Same with Hacker News - I might need to look something up for work, but I shouldn’t end up reading the front page for the next 30 minutes.

Most blockers operate at the domain/app level, but whether something is distracting really depends on what you’re trying to do.

With Nono, you describe what you intend to work on at the start of a focus session. It then uses an on-device model to look at the active window in that context. So a relevant YT video can stay open, while an unrelated video gets blocked.

The tricky part right now is the model. It needs to be small and fast to run continuously, while still being capable enough to understand the context and not annoy you with false positives.

https://nonofocus.com/