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

I am working on nothing which by the is something important and precious because it is something to works on nothing. By the way, nothing else matter, which mean that everything keep my mind on working on the thing of nothing.

I am sharing what I learnt building electric cars.

On YouTube: https://youtube.com/@foxev-content

In a learning app: https://foxev.io/academy/

On a physical board where people can explore electric car tech on their desk: https://foxev.io/ev-mastermind-kit/

Backstory: from 2018-2023 I converted London taxis to be electric and built three prototypes. We also raised £300k and were featured in The Guardian. I have a day-job again these days and am persisting what I learnt and sharing it. YouTube is super interesting for me because of the writing, similar for the web app actually because the code isn't that complicated, it's about how do I present it in a way that engaged users, so I am thinking mostly about UX.

Actually why not, here is the intro to the first module (100 questions about batteries - ends in a 404): https://foxev.io/academy/modules/1/

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Some time ago, I began searching for Python-related events and discovered that many PUGs (local Python User Groups) had disappeared sometime around COVID (at least my local PUGs). After analyzing the ones listed on the official Python website, I found only about 18% were still active, with most hosted on Meetup. This makes sense, as maintaining a community requires time and money, which small PUGs don't have. Meetup can be costly for those starting local Python User Groups, but it's very cheap for big communities. IMO Meetup is not the best place for PUGs, as they are not big by default.

PUGs need a way to communicate and broadcast, to be discovered, but it doesn't necessarily need all of Meetup's features. Also, PUGs probably don't want to be tied to Facebook or other social media platforms. It'd be best if they allowed a simple ownership transfer, once you get tired of organizing.

That's why I created https://pythonuser.group/ - a lightweight side project that, despite being rough around the edges, fulfills the core need: allowing people to discover PUGs worldwide for free. The platform costs me almost nothing to maintain. Allows to subscribe to local PUGs via RSS (not sure if it works). I'll add "export all my PUG data" once someone requests this feature.

It's the first time I share it with the world. Please don't treat it as prod-ready. Feedback welcome at hn@{username}.com

Working on a minimalist tool to archive web pages:

https://arcv.me

This web app is an off-shoot of a command-line archiving tool I wrote to scratch my own itch.

In its current form it's tripped up by bot detection and often struggles with heavyweight pages, but it works on enough pages to be somewhat useful.

Archived pages aren't retained long-term, but you can download them as static HTML files. (So kinda like a hosted version of SingleFile.)