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

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

#21

Post by asdfbank »

I've been working on Plantshare, a free app that aims to help gardeners share plants with other local gardeners. If you do gardening, it's likely that your plants are making more plants all by themselves; use this app to share them and see what others near you are sharing. I basically made the app that I couldn't find.

Android and iOS are in a working beta, might do a web front end eventually too.

I'm not a professional at any of this (accounting day job) and there has been a lot of learning but in the end, what a trip, I made a software! I've had a ton of help to bring it to life from a friend who is an actual professional at the back-end stuff (thanks Balthromaw) and copilot too.

https://ps-prod.bloodys.cc/links/getplantshare

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

#22

Post by mikewarot »

In the past month, I came to the discovery that my BitGrid project couldn't meet it's goal of being more power efficient than TPUs, but it took years to figure that out. It could be a quite efficient FPGA like compute fabric, but that's not something I'm super interested in right now.

I've helped a friend get an IFR/Aeroflex/Marconi 2947A Communications Analyzer working, and am now in the process of using Ghidra to disassemble the firmware that runs on the main CPU. (There are several, including a 68000 based cellular option). I think of it as a million piece jigsaw puzzle.

On the way to Vintage Computer Fest, MidWest, my car became the middle of a 5 car sandwich. We all walked away, thanks to modern crumple zones and restraint systems. So, the car is a total loss, now I'm filing forms, and will be looking for a replacement car.

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

#23

Post by carlnewton »

I'm working on Habitat. It's a free and open source, self-hosted platform for communities to discover and discuss their local area. The plan is for it to be federated.

In the last month or so I've been solely focused on plans and content for my instance for my local town, so there hasn't been any programming for a little while but I'll be jumping back into it in weeks to come.

- The idea: https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/location-based-social-net...

- A build update and plan: https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/building-habitat/

- The repository: https://github.com/carlnewton/habitat

- The project board: https://github.com/users/carlnewton/projects/2

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

#24

Post by asdfbank »

carlnewton wrote: post #23

I'm working on Habitat. It's a free and open source, self-hosted platform for communities to discover and discuss their local area. The plan is for it to be federated. In the last month or so I've been solely focused on plans and content for my instance for my local town, so there hasn't been any programming for a little while but I'll be jumping back into it in weeks to come. - The idea: https://carlnewton.github.io…

I love this "local first" focus, which for me translates into "relevant first". My app Plantshare (posted about it in this HN post) is not very useful if you're the only user for 40km around, but I've seen local pockets of signups that gain momentum and are then useful in that locality and the users make local connections.

I think the biggest hurdle for this would be to gain traffic in place of an existing entrenched local Facebook group or similar.

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

#26

Post by nicbou »

A few years ago I've made an appointment finder for the Berlin Bürgeramt. It got blocked by anti bot measures last month so I'm now fixing it. Basically, I'm moving from Python requests to running an actual browser with Playwright. I actually get help from city employees who tell me why it's getting blocked, since my bot follows the rules.

I am going to try vibe coding this one, simply because I know how to do the job but don't feel like doing it.

https://github.com/All-About-Berlin/burgeramt-appointments

https://nicolasbouliane.com/projects/appointment-finder

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

#27

Post by harundu »

Working on Overcentric, a toolkit that simplifies growth for startups - especially for solo founders and small teams.

"Overcentric is like Google Analytics + Mixpanel + Hotjar + Intercom, in a single, cohesive, clutter-free package." - as one of the users described it.

Our vision is for Overcentric to work on autopilot: integrate it in minutes and it works around the clock to understand, support and empower your users - so you get the relevant insights on how to grow and retain more users.

https://overcentric.com/

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

#29

Post by carlnewton »

asdfbank wrote: post #24
carlnewton wrote: post #23

I'm working on Habitat. It's a free and open source, self-hosted platform for communities to discover and discuss their local area. The plan is for it to be federated. In the last month or so I've been solely focused on plans and content for my instance for my local town, so there hasn't been any programming for a little while but I'll be jumping back into it in weeks to come. - The idea: https://carlnewton.github.io…

I love this "local first" focus, which for me translates into "relevant first". My app Plantshare (posted about it in this HN post) is not very useful if you're the only user for 40km around, but I've seen local pockets of signups that gain momentum and are then useful in that locality and the users make local connections. I think the biggest hurdle for this would be to gain traffic in place of an existing entrenched…

Yeah I think established Facebook groups are probably the biggest hurdle. To me, the benefits of not using Facebook are self evident, but a lot of people don't know about the issues around that or don't care. I think creating features that can't be achieved on Facebook could help. Outside of that, I think it's just a matter of providing meaningful content yourself. For Plantshare, I imagine it would be beneficial to be close to you because you, the developer of the app, presumably have a wide variety of plants because that's your interest. And if it's a success for you and your local community, you've succeeded, and any other pockets of success are a bonus. This is at least the way I'm looking at my project here. I still do intend to continue to work on the open source side of things though of course.
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