Alternatives
Products that do what AsteroidOS 2.0 – Nobody asked, we shipped anyway does
Hi HN, After roughly 8 years of silently rolling 1.1 nightlies, we finally tagged a proper stable 2.0 release. We built this because wrist-sized Linux is genuinely fun to hack on, and because a handful of us think it's worth keeping capable hardware alive long after manufacturers move on. Smartwatches don't really get old — the silicon is basically the same as it was a decade ago. We just keep making it useful for us. No usage stats, no tracking, no illusions of mass adoption. The only real signal we get is the occasional person who appears in our Matrix chat going "hey, it booted on my…
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2011 · wwww.getinpulse.com
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2015 · janos.io
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I pretty much always have a kernel project going on, and have been that way for decades. Over the past couple of years, that's been Anos, which has gotten further along than any of my previous hobby kernels, supporting IPC, multitasking, SMP (x86-64 only right now) and running on real hardware. LLMs (mostly Claude Code) have been used during development, but I learned early on that it's not _great_ at code at this level, so I've restricted its use to mostly documentation and tests. There's _a little_ AI code in the user space, but I have a strict "no AI code" rule in the kernel itself. I…
Apr 2026 · github.com
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The NSA metadata gathering and passive monitoring is quite upsetting, and we don't have much confidence in legal changes happening quickly, so we put together a really simple consumer VPN service. We're still cleaning up the UI and making the install process easier, but it should work for people now. Yes, it's based in the US, but there's a big difference between "will turn over data proactively" and "will push back on requests to the fullest extent of the law". Since we don't fall under CALEA, there's no requirement for us to have any monitoring infrastructure. We're focusing on the mobile…
2013
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Hi HN! I'm the developer of OffChess a Hackernews favorite Chess puzzles app. About 6 months ago I saw someone reviewing an Apple TV 4k on their youtube channel and it looked vastly superior in terms of UI and UX to what Android based Google TVs provide. I asked the people over at r/AndroidTV if someone has ported Apple TV experience to Android TV and they said no. So I built a makeshift video and posted on Reddit. People there loved it and started sending me Reddit chat messages every day to build and launch it. So it took me 3 months to solve all edge cases and I built and launched…
May 2026 · at4klauncher.com
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Hey HN'ers! If you sit around a computer all day and are looking to be more active, or are just active in general, check out our app! https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id903459923?pt=265797&ct=hn&mt=8 or https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.activityclub We have been hacking on this for 2 years and it's finally nearing a state where we are stoked about! Launched last Aug (2015) to the public. Coming up on our 1 yr anniversary and starting to get some traction. Two of us have _each_ lost about 70lbs while building the app…
2016
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4 months ago, our announcement for our free, multi-node, petabyte-scale time-series database generated 200+ comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23272992 Many commented on the Timescale License, our source-available license governing advanced features (eg multi-node). Most were positive, but some pointed out drawbacks (who says HN can't be productive!). That spurred an internal debate. Today we're happy to share an updated Timescale License with new rights, including the "right-to-repair" and "right-to-improve." And we’re doubling-down on our community, making all…
2020
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Hi HN! I’m the founder of WorkOS (https://workos.com) We provide a developer API for making your app enterprise-ready. You can quickly add features including SSO/SAML, Director Sync (SCIM), Audit Logs, and more. WorkOS is “Plaid for enterprise IT systems.” I learned about these enterprise requirements the hard way. Previously, I founded Nylas where we built an email app called Nylas Mail. We couldn’t monetize that app and shut it down (RIP) and the main reason was that we couldn’t sell it to enterprise because it was missing features. Here’s a short Twitter thread with more…
2020
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We believe the best software is built when devs seriously use the thing they're building. We're a mobile dev tools company (emergetools.com), but we don't actually build & ship "apps"... until now. Excited to share our first open-source app: Hacker News for Android Any feedback/PRs very welcome on the repo. We also wrote about why we built and open-sourced this HN app here: https://www.emergetools.com/blog/posts/open-sourcing-emerge-...
2024 · github.com
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Raising my hand as someone who's checked Settings > General > Software Update way too many times. I got tired of finding out about iOS updates from Twitter 6 hours after they dropped, so I built EarlyNotify. It's dead simple: the system watches Apple's firmware servers, and when a new iOS/iPadOS/macOS/watchOS/tvOS update hits, you get an email within 15 minutes. That's it. No app to install. No account dashboard. Just an email saying "hey, iOS 26.1 just dropped." It's free, open-source, no upsells, just notifications. Would love any feedback! Happy to answer questions…
Nov 2025 · earlynotify.com
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Hello HN! I'm an Android OS engineer. I've worked with AOSP and Linux kernels all my career and always wondered about lack of sophisticated tools to debug and analyze system-level logs. Always had to resort to manually skimming through large log files to find something I needed to. With the rise of LLMs and the AI-age, I felt it was a great opportunity to build something for OS engineers, which is what led to logcat.ai! We are building the industry-first observability platform for system level intelligence. Think "Datadog for operating systems" instead of applications. Currently, we support…
2025 · logcat.ai
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Hi hackers! I'm a self-taught solo teenage dev ever wanted to show what you're doing right now on the internet? well I've been wanting to for a while, so I built Lynk, a lightweight macOS app that tracks your active apps, window titles, and daily usage in real time, and broadcasts that data over WebSockets. Oh and it also updates whenever you switch apps to connected clients! No SDKs, no APIs — just local tracking + a websocket endpoint you can ping from any language. GitHub: https://github.com/shaileshsaravanan/lynk
2025 · github.com
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I built this after one too many 3 AM wake-ups due to API outages. Existing solutions felt overpriced and overcomplicated for my small-scale needs. Key features: Simple, GitHub-inspired dashboard Free tier: 5-minute checks, email alerts, 30-day retention Premium tier: 1-minute checks, SMS alerts, unlimited retention Significantly more affordable than enterprise solutions Tech stack: Next.js frontend, Node.js backend, MongoDB, Stripe for payments. This is my attempt to solve the "sleep vs. downtime" dilemma for fellow indie hackers. I'd appreciate any feedback or feature suggestions. What's…
2024 · martinup.app
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