Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

981–990 of 1001 posts

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

#981

I've been working on a voxel game engine called Bonsai for ~10 years. Probably the most interesting thing about it at the moment is the editor. The world, and most things in it, are represented as collections of SDFs. More accurately, they're density fields, but, potato-tomato. Bonsai has undergone a large rewrite over the last couple years that's nearing completion. A world edit is defined as a bunch of SDF paramete…

This guy is creating what looks to me to be a very impressive 3D version of Noita using a custom microvoxel engine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8HRCXxI0BY

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

#982

I'm still working on https://openaltfinder.com ; a place to help you discover open source alternatives. Got quite a lot of traction this month due to Google/Apple Maps renaming Lake Ontario. But overall it's a struggle, the site is still in Google jail/sandbox, so it's not even seeing any Google impressions. So most traffic is due to being very active and posting wherever I can.

I think it will be difficult to compete with alternativeto.net which has a longstanding community, and options like filtering based on operating system. What are you doing which differentiates you?

The main differentiator is that I’m purely focussed on providing open source alternatives, whereas alternativeto does everything.

Having filters to better filter through the large list of alternatives is on my TODO list.

But in general, I think both (and many other directories) can co-exist without issues. I personally think alternativeto is a little mainstream anyway, whereas my directory is focussed on people who explicitly want to selfhost, but obviously there is overlap.

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

#983
- Muntazam: simple and fully local habit tracker (Android version is coming soon)

Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/muntazam-habit-tracker/id68053...

- Carbonless: Calculate your website's carbon emissions

Link: https://carbonless.cc

- Aidekin: An AI assistant that runs inside your visitor’s browser

Link: https://aidekin.com

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

#984
Just launched an endless Mad Libs style fill-in-the-blank story generator. My kiddos (and we parents) love the format, but we never carried around the paper booklets, and this way we can write them about whatever we want (obviously mostly spaceships and farts). I built out a family library so everything's synced regardless of which parent drove to practice that day.

Getting all the product right (ish) around multiple devices, family invites, installing on kid devices, etc. was way more difficult than the actual generator. But I get darn-near furious when I'm just trying to get an app on a kid's iPad and I have to manually type passwords four different times, so making that smooth was worth it.

https://tellmeapenguin.com/

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

#985
I'm still trucking away on Digital Carrot (https://www.digitalcarrot.app/)

It's a screen time app/ app blocker that blocks distractions until certain programmable goals are met. For example:

- Block social media until you walk 10,000 steps

- Block Factorio until you physically go to the gym

- Block Netflix until you finish all your goals in todoist

The app is cross platform and available on everything (except Linux, which I'd like to change soon!).

Goals are all verified with real data from places such as your phone's GPS or fitness trackers. They can be programmed using a simple expression editor.

Right now I'm working on streamlining the plugin and goal system so that people can more easily write and share goals with one another!

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

#986

I've been working on a voxel game engine called Bonsai for ~10 years. Probably the most interesting thing about it at the moment is the editor. The world, and most things in it, are represented as collections of SDFs. More accurately, they're density fields, but, potato-tomato. Bonsai has undergone a large rewrite over the last couple years that's nearing completion. A world edit is defined as a bunch of SDF paramete…

This guy is creating what looks to me to be a very impressive 3D version of Noita using a custom microvoxel engine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8HRCXxI0BY

Oh yeah, I've seen that guys engine before. It's super impressive.

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

#987
Working on an opinionated identity provider from security and performance perspective (sort of next version of keycloak). My observation with existing products is that the security, performance and architecture aspect gets diluted and take a back seat when products are built incrementally, using VC money with fragmented understanding of the space. Identity is relatively a well understood problem when it comes to discovering the product requirements and there is an opportunity to make a wholistic product in one go. Will be sharing more details probably by the next month.

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

#988
I have become utterly obsessed with creating a 2D top down mech game. I have not worked this intensively on anything else in my life. It's really silly in some way, wish I'd have this obsession for something more valuable. Alas.

I would have never started this game without agentic coding, but now, I cannot stop working. It's amazing. So this is how some of you have felt all your life about tech or other subjects? I'd always believed it, but now, I experience the difference first hand. Before, discipline is what I needed to start working. Now, discipline is what I need to stop.

Post reply on HN