Hacker News: chrsstrm

New comment by chrsstrm in "Simple screw counter"

chrsstrm — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 03:59:48 +0000

  >> I have wasted a significant chunk of my life counting out small numbers of parts into bags and posting them to people.

So, small parts like this are always counted by weight, and I'm wondering why you would spend so much time on a counting solution when "buy a scale" is right there.

New comment by chrsstrm in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)"

chrsstrm — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 04:01:52 +0000

I’m building an app that facilitates discovery and eases payments for roadside stands that sell produce, honey, maple syrup, eggs, firewood, crafts, etc. The concept is that any roadside vendor can sign up for free (forever, no add-ons or upsells) and they have an online home for their home business. The vendor can list up to 3 stands and show off the products they sell in each stand. Users can discover stands near them by list, search, or map, view the vendor and stand details, ratings, payment methods accepted, etc. When arriving at a stand the user can scan a QR code which opens a web cart, allowing them to add products they are going to purchase and then “check out” using one of the vendor’s stated payment methods like Venmo, CashApp, PayPal, Apple Cash, Zelle, or good old hard currency. We make these payments easier by standardizing the check out experience but we do not facilitate payments at all - these stands have always been and will continue to be self-serve on the honor system. Once you’ve paid, you get a receipt and take your goods. The vendor gets an alert that a sale intent was started and by which method so they know where to look for their revenue. In the future we may help with some basic reporting and very light inventory management if vendors ask for it. We allow users to alert the vendor if a stand is out of stock, which is also reflected in search so other users are informed as well. Users can then ask to receive re-stock alerts as the vendor restocks. Then of course users can favorite stands and products, share them, rate them, and create shareable collections of stands they curate (The Honey Trail or Summer Sweet Corn All-Stars, etc.). Eventually we will be adapted for events like farmer’s markets, craft fairs, and christmas markets. I built this because I am a maple syrup producer (tapping starts in a few short weeks from now) and I’m starting to get into mass sales of my syrup. I felt like people who produce and sell these products put a lot of hard work into the process and deserve a legit discovery tool as well as a basic stand management system that does not make them change their process or get in their way. An app like this costs basically nothing to run and I will ensure it is free to use as long as I am in charge. I’m testing this week and likely soft-launching in the next couple weeks - the goal is to be online around March 1. It was just going to be web-only (Supabase with a Svelte front end) but after Claude put me in timeout last week I tried Antigravity and now have 80% of an iOS app and will scaffold my Android app in the next month - so native apps will follow a web release pretty quickly.

New comment by chrsstrm in "Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign"

chrsstrm — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 04:49:09 +0000

It's easy to see the word Waymo and think clanker autonomous car, but there are very often people inside that car - they are a rideshare service after all. Calling endangering other humans "legitimate" because you dislike the taxi company is not a good look.

New comment by chrsstrm in "GitHub: Git operation failures"

chrsstrm — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 21:41:17 +0000

Would love to see a global counter for the number of times ‘ssh -T git@github.com’ was invoked.

New comment by chrsstrm in "GitHub: Git operation failures"

chrsstrm — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 20:54:55 +0000

I thought I was going crazy when I couldn't push changes but now it seems it's time to just call it for the day. Back at it tomorrow.

New comment by chrsstrm in "The Swift SDK for Android"

chrsstrm — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 20:27:46 +0000

I'm just getting started in iOS development as a hobby, but what does this mean? Can I now build my app in Xcode with an Android target and use that binary in the Play Store? It surely can't be that easy now is it?

New comment by chrsstrm in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)"

chrsstrm — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 01:07:08 +0000

I built https://invoicepad.app which is a free, completely in-browser tool for creating invoices, estimates, and quotes. Yes, similar apps have been posted here before, but none were built the way I envisioned, so I made my own. The key difference: all invoice data is stored in the URL hash, not the querystring. This is important because querystrings are sent to the server with every request, while hashes stay local to your browser. This means I can never see your invoice data, unlike other similar apps. The workflow is simple: use your browser's bookmark manager as your invoice filing system. Or if you want to keep it offline, just copy and paste invoice URLs into a text document for storage. I’ve also included helpful features like saved profiles to save on repeated data input. The next step is to finish working on a browser extension (v1 is being tested) to make bookmarking, editing, and saving changes even easier, that is if I ever stop being distracted by other side projects.

New comment by chrsstrm in "Ask HN: Are Squarespace and Wix sites worth it?"

chrsstrm — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 03:00:13 +0000

I recently moved two sites from GoDaddy's predatory WordPress offering (they were charging $1k a year just for some security add-on) to use Hugo + DecapCMS + AWS Amplify. Decap is a fantastic "good enough" CMS to do anything clients of this size need, the only downside is it takes about 1 minute to deploy any changes. Amplify let's you lock a version of Hugo to use, or bring your own, and it will build and deploy your site on any new commit if your repo is in Github or Gitlab. Both clients are currently billed $0.51 per month, and the only reason it is that high is because Route53 costs $0.50 per month per hosted zone. So both these clients went from paying nearly $3k each year for a WordPress site to paying just over $6 a year for a site with nearly the same functionality and none of the maintenance or security concerns. And once everything is all set up, which honestly is not that hard, the only "tech" they need to know is how to sign into Gitlab, which are the credentials they use to log into their Decap admin.

New comment by chrsstrm in "Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell"

chrsstrm — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 21:40:23 +0000

What laser setup are you using?

New comment by chrsstrm in "Ask HN: How to build site with payment, subscriptions, user login, registration"

chrsstrm — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 16:53:36 +0000

https://pocketbase.io is already aligned with what you're working with, and can be embedded in your existing codebase.

New comment by chrsstrm in "Ask HN: How to build site with payment, subscriptions, user login, registration"

chrsstrm — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 16:35:25 +0000

Supabase for registration and auth, frontend framework of your choice for views, Stripe payment links for subscriptions. You'll have to sprinkle in some Supabase Edge Functions for Stripe webhooks for your entitlements flow as well. AWS SES for transactional email. Something like Basedash for your admin panel and at this point you're running an MVP at least.

New comment by chrsstrm in "The Struggle to Contain, and Eat, the Invasive Deer Taking over Hawaii"

chrsstrm — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 20:45:51 +0000

It's not a huge mystery why this is an issue. Most land that axis roam on is private and either does not allow hunting or charges very inflated prices to hunt. The other factor is the Hawaii DLNR is terrible at herd management. I've been hunting axis during the archery season on Lanai for years but am contemplating not going back because of how unorganized the program is and because they absolutely failed in managing the 2020 drought that killed almost 2/3 of the herd. I'd love to hunt Molokai or Maui but unless you personally know a landowner who will allow you to hunt, be prepared to pay upwards of $5K just for one animal. That's crazy.

New comment by chrsstrm in "Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?"

chrsstrm — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 03:00:29 +0000

Don't overlook https://datasette.io/ even though it does much more than endpoints.

New comment by chrsstrm in "My elderly parents can't resist answering the phone"

chrsstrm — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 20:29:45 +0000

Google voice has this feature for free.

New comment by chrsstrm in "The Philips Hue ecosystem is collapsing"

chrsstrm — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 00:47:04 +0000

Any light you want to independently control is a device. So yes, each bulb is a device. But that was with the TRADFRI, which it seems they don't sell anymore. It looks like the DIRIGERA supports up to 100 devices though, so probably nothing to worry about. Feels like I probably bought the first gen of their smart products.

New comment by chrsstrm in "The Philips Hue ecosystem is collapsing"

chrsstrm — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 00:02:23 +0000

I use the Ikea lights and bridge, although mine is a few years old at this point. Everything just works and I've maybe had 1 issue in just over 4 years. Easily integrates with either Google Home or HomeKit or HA. My only complaint is (my) bridge needs hardwire ethernet access and each bridge only supports 5 devices. I bought one of the wireless physical switches which seemed like it would come in handy, but the battery died pretty quick. Not a big deal though as I never used it anyway, but having the option was nice.

New comment by chrsstrm in "Free Learning from CISA.gov"

chrsstrm — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 01:39:04 +0000

Echoing the sentiment that a gov website asking for location permissions is off-putting. Especially a gov website about cyber security. Yes, it seems to be for the feature that matches you to local courses, but all courses listed are online. I would expect more from CISA.

New comment by chrsstrm in "A third of North America’s birds have vanished"

chrsstrm — Sun, 16 Jul 2023 02:32:56 +0000

You missed the biggest point - North America is a capitalist society and there's no money in any of these solutions. There's profit in deforestation. There's profit in using pesticides. There's profit in razing forests to expand suburbs. But there's no profit in maintaining a natural and healthy habitat for the creatures that live in the areas we want to exploit.

Do local solutions work? Yes, they absolutely do. I've been working with state and local foresters on a habitat improvement project on land that I own and it is producing real results. Since 2018 I've been converting ag land to forest and meadows. I've planted over 6000 trees with my own hands and constructed and curated scrapes (ponds) and meadow areas with local grasses and flowers. It took a couple years but the turnaround is evident. I have families of ducks living on my land that never used to be there before. The area has become popular with migrating geese and sandhill cranes. I have a healthy array of woodland creatures who took up residence including a family of bobcats. Local wildflowers have attracted and given a home to more bees than I've ever seen out on that property. By all measures my project is a success and I'll continue it for as long as I can, but all monies that fund this come out of my own pocket. I can enroll in the state's managed forest program to receive tax breaks on my property, but that's about it. I could solicit donations and look for grants to help foot the bill, but even then I'd still be in the red. The only ROI I will get from these actions is the belief I'm doing my part for a social cause. And just like governments or social groups or even corporations, when times get tight the feel-good programs and dollars are the first to get cut since they don't show a return that can be expressed on a balance sheet. If I reach a point where I can't pay for more trees or spend time planting them, I just won't plant more trees. I have 42 more acres of trees to plant but I also won't starve myself and my family to make it happen. I've talked to lots of people about the options I have for funding this work but it all comes down to either pay for it yourself or take charity.

Everyone wants to save the trees. Everyone wants to save the birds and the bees and all the furry woodland creatures but no one wants to pay for it. You're not fighting against goodwill, you're fighting against capitalism and you'll always lose because there are no objective returns on investment for the preservation of natural habitat.

New comment by chrsstrm in "James Lewis, the sole suspect in the 1982 Tylenol murders, has died"

chrsstrm — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 01:38:24 +0000

What exactly in the supply chain would someone notice? For those who were either too young or didn't exist at the time, 1982 was a completely different world. You know the cellophane seal around the bottle tops on everything from food to medicine bottles? Those didn't exist. The metalized vacuum safety seal on the inside of the bottle that's a pain to pull off? Those didn't exist. Holographic or numbered tamper seals? Yeah, no one had even heard of those yet. Real-time tracking of a lot ID to trace a product all the way from primary ingredient supplier to manufacture to the retail shelf? Ha! The only way to verify where your products were in the world is if you were standing in front of it. I'm not saying it was the wild west, but I'm also not saying it wasn't. Tamper seals and smart supply chain management didn't exist. Those Tylenol bottles could have been tampered with anywhere - the manufacturing facility, in a shipping warehouse, in transit, in a retail store's stock room or even right on the shelf. Those bottles could have been tampered with literally anywhere along the journey and no one would have known because unless you caught the culprit red-handed, there would have been no indication that anything was amiss. We take food and medicine tampering very seriously today because of this incident in 1982, which is the only silver lining in that tragedy.

New comment by chrsstrm in "National Geographic lays off its last remaining staff writers"

chrsstrm — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 03:42:06 +0000

We already have the Payment Request API, which is more than enough to handle this. My general view on the "process" mostly revolves around the UX from the customer's perspective. Someone needs to build a flow and say, this is how it works, take it or leave it.