Hacker News: dmotz

New comment by dmotz in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)"

dmotz — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 22:35:36 +0000

Trying to make it effortless to build p2p apps without any setup:

https://trystero.dev

Gemini 3

dmotz — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 16:05:09 +0000

Article URL: https://deepmind.google/models/gemini/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45968052

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

New comment by dmotz in "Make any site multiplayer in a few lines. Serverless WebRTC matchmaking"

dmotz — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 16:58:28 +0000

https://github.com/dmotz/trystero

Direct link to the underlying source code.

New comment by dmotz in "Make any site multiplayer in a few lines. Serverless WebRTC matchmaking"

dmotz — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 16:20:33 +0000

I'm the Trystero author and I'd say both libs attempt to accomplish the same goal but with very different APIs. One key difference is PeerJS uses a single centralized server by default for matchmaking, whereas Trystero offers lots of flexibility and redundancy, using various signaling connections in parallel.

Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, our image model

dmotz — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 14:20:47 +0000

Article URL: https://developers.googleblog.com/en/introducing-gemini-2-5-flash-image/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45026949

Points: 19

# Comments: 2

New comment by dmotz in "Peerfetch – Peer-to-Peer HTTP over WebRTC"

dmotz — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 15:33:20 +0000

You might be interested in my side project Trystero https://github.com/dmotz/trystero

It abstracts away the work of signaling and connects peers via open decentralized networks like BitTorrent, Nostr, MQTT, IPFS, etc.

New comment by dmotz in "Building an Open Source Decentralized E-Book Search Engine"

dmotz — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 19:18:14 +0000

I have a side project that aims to organize your ebook highlight collections with on-device semantic search. [1] Right now it only indexes your own content but I'd like to add a mode that allows you to share your collection and let others find relevant ideas via semantic search -- a discovery platform for ideas found in books. It's open source if you want a sense of how it works now. [2]

[1] https://emdash.ai/

[2] https://github.com/dmotz/emdash

New comment by dmotz in "Holepunch Unveils P2P Platform "Pear Runtime""

dmotz — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 22:38:19 +0000

This looks exciting and I'm pleased to see more and more frictionless ways of making p2p apps. I've been building a somewhat similar hobby project [1] that aims to connect peers in the browser by piggybacking on open protocols out on the net (BitTorrent, MQTT, Nostr, IPFS, etc).

This project seems to be using Hyperswarm which I've looked at for use as a peering medium but it seems like it's not supported in the browser. I'd love to implement it if that story changes since it's so easy to distribute apps on the web.

[1] https://github.com/dmotz/trystero/

New comment by dmotz in "WebRTC for the Curious (2020)"

dmotz — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 14:46:52 +0000

This is a really nice overview of the nuances of WebRTC.

If you want to try this tech at a higher level, I maintain an experimental hobby project that attempts to abstract all the complicated parts of WebRTC into a simple API. Most importantly, it obviates the need to run your own signaling server by piggybacking on various public protocols like torrent trackers or IPFS to match peers. It's well-suited for quick projects/prototypes.

https://github.com/dmotz/trystero/

Interacting with Gemini through multimodal prompting

dmotz — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 15:17:51 +0000

Article URL: https://developers.googleblog.com/2023/12/how-its-made-gemini-multimodal-prompting.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38544931

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Gemini AI

dmotz — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 15:03:47 +0000

Article URL: https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38544729

Points: 2135

# Comments: 1602

New comment by dmotz in "Ask HN: Show me your half baked project"

dmotz — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 21:50:56 +0000

Two personal projects I'd like to get fully-baked eventually:

https://emdash.ai

My attempt to get more out of all my ebook highlights using on-device AI.

https://github.com/dmotz/trystero

My attempt at making it as easy as possible to add p2p to a web app (no server required). A "jQuery for WebRTC" of sorts.

New comment by dmotz in "A Firefox-only minimap (2021)"

dmotz — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 13:19:41 +0000

A decade ago I built a silly JS library for folding up DOM elements like paper [1] and I eagerly anticipated using element() instead of tediously cloning nodes for every fold. Here we are ten years later and this niche CSS feature has yet to be adopted by the other browsers. Similarly, I thought I'd soon be using the CSS custom filter spec from the same era (which allows custom GLSL shaders to be applied to elements), but it also has yet to pick up traction.

[1] https://oridomi.com

New comment by dmotz in "Writing summaries is more important than reading more books"

dmotz — Sat, 20 May 2023 22:58:07 +0000

Thanks for sharing, I like the name and I'll try it out. Yes, I'd like to add opt-in sharing features in the future -- seeing others' notes can be very insightful as you said.

New comment by dmotz in "Writing summaries is more important than reading more books"

dmotz — Sat, 20 May 2023 22:54:33 +0000

Yes, I'd like to focus on more seamless ways to import your text and OCR is something I've considered.

Your content addressable system sounds very interesting, let me know when you have a demo.

New comment by dmotz in "Writing summaries is more important than reading more books"

dmotz — Sat, 20 May 2023 17:28:56 +0000

Yes, the demo mode is a random subset of things I've highlighted and it's heavily weighted around certain topics and sparse on others, so that's why some passages don't have the strongest semantic matches.

You're right that it would be nice to see things in situ as you're reading, but it would seem that most e-reading experiences are locked down. I appreciate the feedback!

New comment by dmotz in "Writing summaries is more important than reading more books"

dmotz — Sat, 20 May 2023 15:04:27 +0000

I built a tool for myself for the purpose of grokking ideas from books called Emdash [1]. Over the years I've collected reams of highlights from books and articles but until recently, rarely reviewed or absorbed them. The core of this app uses on-device ML to show related passages with similar ideas from other books you've read, and I find that going broad and exploring concepts from different angles really helps in comprehension.

I'm testing out a summarization/rephrase feature backed by LLMs that you can try in the demo. In HN fashion I'm trying to build this openly and gather feedback to see what works. I'd like to push this further in the active direction the article mentions with something like a Socratic dialogue mode where you're nudged to re-explain and examine ideas.

If anyone uses this thing/has feedback, let me know. Source is available too [2].

[1] https://emdash.ai

[2] https://github.com/dmotz/emdash

New comment by dmotz in "Show HN: Use on-device AI to learn more from your book/article highlights"

dmotz — Sat, 29 Apr 2023 16:26:43 +0000

And the source of course: https://github.com/dmotz/emdash

Show HN: Use on-device AI to learn more from your book/article highlights

dmotz — Sat, 29 Apr 2023 15:55:19 +0000

Hello HN,

I decided to clean up and launch a side project I’ve been using to do more with my highlights from books and essays.

I lean on semantic embeddings to do things like showing similar passages from other authors and the ability to do fuzzy/conceptual search queries. I find that viewing an idea from multiple angles can really help in digesting it.

The demo mode also previews a rephrasing feature which is LLM-powered that I’ve found useful in grokking denser passages. I’m hoping to gauge interest in it before pursuing it further.

Please let me know if you find this tool useful and how it could be improved!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35754091

Points: 1

# Comments: 2

New comment by dmotz in "Ask HN: How do you synthesize books that you read?"

dmotz — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 15:08:13 +0000

Bit of a shameless plug but I've been thinking about this for a while and I recently built a free/open-source tool called Emdash [1] to tackle the problem. I’m a heavy ebook highlighter, but I found if I didn’t have a compelling way to review those highlights they fell out of my understanding.

My tool uses on-device semantic embedding which allows you to peruse your collection and see related passages from other books which I find really helps in comprehension when you view a related idea in the words of another author. You can also search for semantic concepts directly to see nearby ideas from various authors, which is nice for when you’re in a mood for exploring a particular space via raw concepts.

The demo mode also previews a passage rephrasing feature, which can give you a simplified or metaphorical explanation, which I’ve found really valuable in grokking dense excerpts. This part is powered by LLMs (off-device) but will be opt-in later. I’m trying to gauge interest for it, so there’s a form to sign up for a waitlist if you’d like.

Would love to hear if anyone else uses this tool and what they’d like to see in it. Source code is available too [2].

[1] https://emdash.ai

[2] https://github.com/dmotz/emdash