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

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

#364

Post by primaprashant »

Building a local CLI tool, hns [1], for speech-to-text in terminal in 5 keystrokes.

It records my voice, transcribes it locally using faster-whisper, and copies the transcription to my clipboard. Check the demo linked in the GitHub repo to see how it works.

I use it especially with Claude Code to provide detailed context for the outcome I want to achieve. I ramble for 5 minutes, and then paste the transcription to Claude Code, instead of having to type all my thoughts all the time.

The workflow is like this:

  $ hns # start recording
  
   # clipboard now holds the text
[1] https://github.com/primaprashant/hns

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

#366

Post by koeng »

Im investigating creating a nattokinase overexpression strain for fun. This is my second home-brewed food GMO!

Basically, nattokinase is an enzyme made by natto (Japanese fermented soybeans). It’s been show clinically to help against blood clots. Unfortunately, the clinical dose is 5x the quantity in a serving of natto.

That’s too much natto to eat! So I’m working to genetically engineer a normal, typical natto strain to just over express that one enzyme, so 1 serving == 1 clinically relevant dose

My last was genetically engineering yeast to produce grape aroma, then baking bread. Was great fun feeding people it. I want to eventually throw GMO dinner parties in SF, but only with GMOs I’ve created with my own hands

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

#367

Post by davidsojevic »

conductr wrote: post #341
davidsojevic wrote: post #315

I've been working on a "businesses for sale" aggregation/search engine that sources data from all of the major "business for sale" type platforms in Australia and de-duplicates listings, extracts data like revenue/profit/etc, and normalises it all for quick browsing. I have a couple of family members and friends who are looking to buy businesses (separately), and it's been much more time-consuming than you'd expect j…

If it’s anything like the US, the listings only represent a minority of what’s available for sale and buyers are better off hiring a broker. If you could find a way to have majority of everyone actually list things for sale online, I think you’d have a solid business.

In Australia, brokers need to be licenced real estate agents (even as a buyers agent in many states), so I suspect there's a relatively decent culture of people who are serious about selling their business going through brokers and resulting in listings on at least one of the major platforms.

There's just shy of 90,000 unique listings I'm tracking (i.e. after de-duplication) on these platforms.

On the traditional classifieds sites and things like Facebook groups focusing on these, there's a significantly smaller number of listings/ads for business sales (e.g. a couple of thousand).

I think where there are definitely hidden gems is where there are many small business owners at or close to retirement age where they haven't planned for a sale at all. For example, a family member nearing retirement age has a small business they're just intending to shut down because they "couldn't be bothered" selling it. I've heard people have had reasonable success just approaching local businesses like this that have older owners OR asking accountants if they have any clients that are thinking of selling.

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

#369

Post by chistev »

rudasn wrote: post #345
chistev wrote: post #44

I'm building ClosedLinks, a tool for sharing files and/or messages anonymously through one-time access links with no traceable sender. Most digital tools assume persistence; ClosedLinks is built for ephemerality and unlinkability. Each link is single-use, redirects on access, and stores encrypted content only temporarily. Recipients never see the original URL, enabling plausible deniability. Think: whistleblowers. En…

Cool, I've been working on similar my self. Not released yet, haven't had the time recently. Curious as to why you store the data in the database in b64 as opposed to files on disk. What's the reasoning for that? Doesn't it make storage/backups/etc more complicated? Not an expert myself, I opted for in browser encryption, in chunks, so as to avoid memory limitations (at least in some browsers, not FF yet), and in bro…

Thank you for the kind words and for taking the time to read the white paper. It's a good feeling when you spend time and effort on something and someone takes the time to go through it.

I opted for database storage to simplify the management of ephemeral data. For a solo project, and as someone still learning, this was a practical way to keep the codebase manageable while focusing on core features like encryption and token-based access control.

However, you should note, in case you missed it in the white paper, that messages and files are deleted upon view (for view-once links) or expiry, whichever comes first. This ensures that the ~33% storage overhead from base64 is temporary, as a file only occupies space until it’s accessed or expires.

That said, you’re absolutely right that base64 encoding adds unneccessay storage overhead and could complicate backups for large files. I also recognize that storing files on disk could be more efficient for large-scale use cases. As (or should I say IF?) the project scales with users, I’ll definitely consider optimizations like disk storage or compression (your gzip idea is great!).

If I run into optimization problems, then it means people are using my product, and that sounds like one of them good problems (Marlo Stanfield's voice).

Your suggestion of in-browser encryption is super compelling, especially to assure users of total privacy. I noted in my white paper that client-side encryption is a future goal to address the limitation of the current server-side encryption, and your approach aligns with that vision.

The browser extension idea is also fascinating, I did not think of that.

I’m open to collaboration (again, as mentioned in my white paper) and would love to discuss ideas for making ClosedLinks more auditable while still keeping it commercially viable/sustainable. I’d be excited to hear more about your project or explore ways we could collaborate on privacy-focused tools.

Thanks again for the encouragement and for sparking this discussion!

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

#370

Post by jMyles »

I'm in Tuva (currently organized as a Russian Republic on the border of Mongolia), about to go offline for 10 days into a small throatsinging retreat. This has been a dream of mine for many years.

I flew Rapid City -=> Minneapolis -=> Seoul -=> Ulaanbaatar -=> Kyzyl to get here; it was quite a harrowing journey, not only for the many difficult flights but also an hours-long interrogation by Russian security (though they were polite and professional - I'll tell that whole story another time).

I'm increasingly convinced of the connection between traditional music and a free internet. As some of you have followed, I have done a few deep-dives into the bluegrass roots of the early Bay Area cypherpunk scene. Because traditional music necessarily lives outside the complex of copyright and intellectual property, I believe it is a natural and necessary fuel of innovation of free ideas.

I can scarcely believe this is happen. t-minus one hour. See y'all in 10 days. Then I'll be online for a few hours, then I head to another similar retreat in Mongolia.

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