What are you working on? What have you been curious about lately?
Comments
hacky_engineer•56m ago
I'm working on a book starring the 6 Simple Machines. I already did one book called "Simple Machines Made Simple." I'm now doing a follow up book that I'm thinking will likely be titled "Simple Machines Made Complicated" (or maybe Complex). Each page is a working mechanism. Kind of like a book full of fidget toys. So I want to have one page for each simple machine, and some of the progressions to complex are easy i.e. (wheel -> gears), but the one I'm currently stuck on is the pulley. My first book had a compound pulley, but now I'm struggling to figure out a more complex pulley example that I can recreate with less than 5mm for the page thickness. My first idea was to do like a roman blind mechanism with a pinch-stop type thing for the cord, but the more I played with it, the more I felt like this wasn't any different from the first book. I also like the idea of a chain hoist type mechanism, but I'm worried there isn't enough visual pay off for what you put into it. Like you move this chain thing around a bunch, but you only get a very small movement on the other end.
Anyway, that's I'm working on. It might take me another 6 months, but I'm sure I'll figure something out ;)
I think a biweekly post cadence versus monthly might be beneficial due to the thread locking after 14 days, which would ensure there is always an active thread for folks to share what they're hacking on (and they might not be ready or in a position for a Show HN thread). Otherwise, there is a period of time where you cannot share between the last thread when it closes and the next thread. 1st and 15th of the month, for example. Or perhaps allow these specific threads a longer active window before they close to new comments.
(n=1, ymmv)
iamwil•50m ago
Working on an interactive explainer for code. When agents write most of the code, I find I'm losing the working theory of the code/architecture. Code review had typically served a couple of purposes, two of which are catching errors and disseminating codebase knowledge amongst the team. I find that adversarial agent reviews are good at catching errors, and that I prefer to learn about the architecture before/while I'm designing the next feature, rather than after.
I've also been designing a APL/BQN-like language that uses Korean as a way to compact and compose the meanings of the operations.
sliqqq•9m ago
Working on an Apple Notes clone, but everything is a local Markdown file.
Currently free, macOS (Silicon + Intel) and Windows. Has tags and priorities, can display many scientific syntaxes (mhchem, most TeX / LaTeX stuff, Excalidraw, PlantUML, Graphviz / DOT, Vega-Lite, and actual Markdown footnotes). Can show notes in vertical lanes like JIRA does. Free iCloud sync too. Still early alpha.
hacky_engineer•56m ago