Showing posts with label Hacker News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hacker News. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 3, 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Another YC company was acquihired today by OpenAI

Another YC company was acquihired today by OpenAI
16 by liurenju | 6 comments on Hacker News.

New top story on Hacker News: Vector search on our codebase transformed our SDLC automation

Vector search on our codebase transformed our SDLC automation
18 by antonybrahin | 2 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN, In software development, the process of turning a user story into detailed documentation and actionable tasks is critical. However, this manual process can often be a source of inconsistency and a significant time investment. I was driven to see if I could streamline and elevate it. I know this is a hot space, with big players like GitHub and Atlassian building integrated AI, and startups offering specialized platforms. My goal wasn't to compete with them, but to see what was possible by building a custom, "glass box" solution using the best tools for each part of the job, without being locked into a single ecosystem. What makes this approach different is the flexibility and full control. Instead of a pre-packaged product, this is a resilient workflow built on Power Automate, which acts as the orchestrator for a sequence of API calls: Five calls to the Gemini API for the core generation steps (requirements, tech spec, test strategy, etc.). One call to an Azure OpenAI model to create vector embeddings of our codebase. One call to Azure AI Search to perform the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). This was the key to getting context-aware, non-generic outputs. It reads our actual code to inform the technical spec and tasks. A bunch of direct calls to the Azure DevOps REST API (using a PAT) to create the wiki pages and work items, since the standard connectors were a bit limited. The biggest challenge was moving beyond simple prompts and engineering a resilient system. Forcing the final output into a rigid JSON schema instead of parsing text was a game-changer for reliability. The result is a system that saves us hours on every story and produces remarkably consistent, high-quality documentation and tasks. The full write-up with all the challenges, final prompts, and screenshots is in the linked blog post. I’m here to answer any questions. Would love to hear your feedback and ideas!

Monday, September 1, 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: woomarks, transfer your Pocket links to this app or self-host it

Show HN: woomarks, transfer your Pocket links to this app or self-host it
9 by earlyriser | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Pocket is shutting down and I really, really liked it. So I built woomarks, an app that let's you save links with a similar UI. It's very minimal, but it's doing everything I liked from Pocket and you can bulk import your links and use the app or self-host. - Public app that you can test: https://woomarks.com/ - My self-hosted version, where you can see my saves: https://ift.tt/m9ZM5dY - Repository if you want to self-host: https://ift.tt/nMdf8s6 Export links from Pocket here: https://ift.tt/y4KiESX the last day will be on October 20025. Features: - Add/Delete links - Search - Tags - Bookmarklet (useful for a 2-click-save) - Data reads from: csv file in server (these links are public) local storage in browser (these links are visible just for the user) - Local storage saving. - Import to local storage from csv file - Export to csv from local storage. - Export to csv from csv file (useful when links are "deleted" using the app and just hidden using a local storage blacklist). - Export to csv from both places. - No external libraries. - Vanilla css code. - Vanilla js code.

New top story on Hacker News: One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed

One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed
8 by diaphanous | 0 comments on Hacker News.

Sunday, August 31, 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Anonymous Age Verification

Show HN: Anonymous Age Verification
4 by jwally | 2 comments on Hacker News.
So I'm not an expert in this area, but here's an attempt at cost effective, anonymous, age verification flow that probably covers ~70% of use cases in the United States. The basic premise is to leverage your bank (who already has had to perform KYC on you to open an account) to attest to your age for age-restricted merchant sites (pornhub, gambling, etc) without sharing any more information than necessary. Flow works like this: 1) You go to gambling.com 2) They request you to verify your age 3) You choose "Bank Verification" 4) You trigger a WebAuthn Credential Creation flow 5) gambling.com gives you a string to copy ------------- 6) You log into your bank 7) You go to bank.com/age-verify 8) You paste in the string you were given 9) The bank verifies it/you and creates a signed payload with your age-claims (over_18: true, over_21: false) 10) You copy this and go back to gambling.com --------------- 11) You paste the string back into gambling.com 12) You perform WebAuthn Auth flow 13) gambling.com verifies everything (signatures, webauthn, etc) 14) gambling.com sets a session-cookie and _STRONGLY_ encourages you to create an account (with a pass key). This will prevent you from having to verify your age every time you visit gambling.com The mechanics might feel off, but it feels like this in the neighborhood of a way to perform anonymous age verification. This is virtually free, and requires extremely light infra. Banks can be incentivized with small payments, or offer it because everyone else does and don't want to get left behind.

Tuesday, August 26, 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: SecretMemoryLocker – File Encryption Without Static Passwords

Show HN: SecretMemoryLocker – File Encryption Without Static Passwords
7 by YuriiDev | 0 comments on Hacker News.
I built SecretMemoryLocker ( https://ift.tt/3K57sAi ), a file encryption tool that generates keys dynamically from your answers to personal questions instead of using a static master password. This makes offline brute-force attacks much more difficult. Think of it as a password manager that meets mnemonic seed recovery, but without storing any sensitive keys on disk. Why? I kept losing master passwords and wanted a solution that wasn't tied to a single point of failure. I also wanted to create a "digital legacy" that my family could access only under specific conditions. The core principle is knowledge-based encryption: the key only exists in memory when you provide the correct answers. Status: * MVP is ready for Windows (.exe). * Linux and macOS support is planned. * UI is available in English, Spanish, and Ukrainian. Key Features: * No Static Secrets: No master password or seed phrase is ever stored. The key is reconstructed on the fly. * Knowledge-Based Key Generation: The final encryption key is derived from a combination of your personal answers and file metadata. * Offline Brute-Force Resistance: Uses MirageLoop, a decoy system that activates when incorrect answers are entered. Instead of decrypting real data, it generates an endless sequence of AI-created questions from a secure local database, creating an illusion of progress while keeping your real data untouched. * Offline AI Generation Mode: Optional offline Q&A generator (prototype). How It Works (Simplified): 1) Files are packed into an AES-256 encrypted ZIP archive. 2) A JSON key file stores the questions in an encrypted chain. Each subsequent question is encrypted with a key derived from the previous correct answer and the file's hash. This forces you to answer them sequentially. 3) The final encryption key for the ZIP file is derived by combining the hashes of all your correct answers. The key derivation formula looks like this: K_final = SHA256(H(answer1+file_hash) + H(answer2+file_hash) + ...) (Note: We are aware that a fast hash like SHA256 is not ideal for a KDF. We plan to migrate to Argon2 in a future release to further strengthen resistance against brute-force attacks.) To encrypt, you provide a file. This creates two outputs: your_file.txt → your_file_SMLkey.json + your_file_SecretML.zip To decrypt, you need both files and the correct answers. Install & Quick Start: Download the EXE from GitHub Releases (no dependencies needed): https://ift.tt/cy2ZRuK Encrypt: SecretMemoryLocker.exe --encrypt "C:\docs\important.pdf" Decrypt: SecretMemoryLocker.exe --decrypt "C:\docs\important_SMLkey.json" I would love to get your feedback on the concept, the user experience, and any security assumptions I've made. Thanks!

Thursday, August 21, 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Tool shows UK properties matching group commute/time preferences

Show HN: Tool shows UK properties matching group commute/time preferences
5 by fryingdan | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I came up with this idea when I was looking to move to London with a friend. I quickly learned how frustrating it is to trial-and-error housing options for days on end, just to be denied after days of searching due to some grotesque counteroffer. To add to this, finding properties that meet the budgets, commuting preferences and work locations of everyone in a group is a Sisyphean task - it often ends in failure, with somebody exceeding their original budget or somebody dropping out. To solve this I built a tool ( https://closemove.com/ ) that: - lets you enter between 1-6 people’s workplaces, budgets, and maximum commute times - filters public rental listings and only shows the ones that satisfy everyone’s constraints - shows results in either a list or map view No sign-up/validation required at present. Currently UK only, but please let me know if you'd want me to expand this to your city/country. This currently works best in London (with walking, cycling, driving and public transport links connected), and works decently in the rest of the UK (walking, cycling, driving only). This started as a side project and it still needs improvement. I’d appreciate any feedback!