Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to We spent the last 18 months building an interactive live video stream
Hey HN!! Many of us enjoyed the "If YouTube had actual channels" Show HN post last week. As developers of a similar project, we wanted to share our approach to building a simulated live experience. We’ve spent around 18 months working on this and have managed to add some advanced features, including content-based interactivity. We are super excited to be releasing both the live stream and the code behind it. Our idea was to combine the communal watching experience of television with the modern trappings of the interactive web. If you go to the stream, you will be watching along with everyone…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. We spent the last 18 months building an interactive live video stream launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
Hey HN! Just for fun, I built an interactive Hacker News Simulator. You can submit text posts and links, just like the real HN. But on HN Simulator, all of the comments are generated by LLMs + generate instantly. The best way to use it (IMHO) is to submit a text post or a curl-able URL here: https://news.ysimulator.run/submit. You don't need an account to post. When you do that, various prompts will be built from a library of commenter archetypes, moods, and shapes. The AI commenters will actually respond to your text post and/or submitted link. I really wanted it to feel…
Nov 2025 · news.ysimulator.run · its alternatives →
- 2
I wasn't quite sure if this qualified as "Show HN" given you can't really download it and try it out. However, dang said[0]: > If it's hardware or something that's not so easy to try out over the internet, find a different way to show how it actually works—a video, for example, or a detailed post with photos. Hopefully I did that? Additionally, I've put code and a detailed guide for the netboot computer management setup on GitHub: https://github.com/kentonv/lanparty Anyway, if this shouldn't have been Show HN, I apologize! [0]…
2024 · lanparty.house · its alternatives →
- 3
Experience interactive live streaming made for developers
2023 · videosdk.live · its alternatives →
- 4
- 5
Podcast for & by engineers working with web video
2016 · heavybit.com · its alternatives →
- 6
1 live stream = 10+ extra pieces of video content
2021 · its alternatives →
- 7IT
Yesterday I saw a post that was “If YouTube had actual channels” (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41247023) and I was so impressed with the tech-nostalgia that I thought, what if Twitch had channels. So I made this as a clone. Thanks for the inspiration, and go check out https://ytch.xyz if not already familiar.
2024 · twch.xyz · its alternatives →
- 8
I scraped every Show HN from the last 12 months (41,301 posts) plus the full comment tree of every launch with 10+ comments, ~100k comment timestamps, all from the Algolia HN API. The median launch gets 2 points and 0 comments. For launches that do get traction, half the comments they'll ever get arrive within 7.2 hours and 90% within 26, and the top decile decays on the same clock as everyone else. Vote timestamps aren't public, so comment timing is the attention proxy; caveats are in the post. Everything reproduces from the repo with one command…
Jul 2026 · jonno.nz · its alternatives →
- 9HL
I am re posting this because when I had made this post the first time there were a few problem with the site that I had to fix and had not anticipated. I got some nice feedback though, so I thought I'd just make one more post because most of the problems have been fixed. HN Live is an alternative interface to Hacker News which provides all of the data on Hacker News in real time. This allows for the real time viewing of what goes into and leaves the trending page as well as the `newest` section. It is just a personal project, and I would like some feedback if you have any. Thanks Site:…
2015 · its alternatives →
- 10HN
We're still in private beta but would love to give more invites and get feedback.
2011 · its alternatives →
- 11
- 12
React.tv▲7Hi HN! I am excited to share the project I have been working on for the last nine months called React.tv. The original problem I was attempting to solve is "Ethical React Content" on the internet. If you are confused, react content is when a content creator watches media and puts their image and commentary over the media being watched. The current solution to these reaction videos is good faith attribution, where the content creator puts a link to the video being watched in their description in hopes that the audience will click it. This is not ideal, and when done on a livestream with…
2025 · react.tv · its alternatives →
- 13HP
Hey everyone, I've been experimenting with collaborative learning and active learning for a while (I launched Coderoulette a couple of months ago) and I'm launching something new today that I'm really excited about. Online learning is pretty passive (video lectures) and lonely, and I think we could create an online learning experience much engaging and effective than that. Only 5% of people who start a Coursera course finish it. My hypothesis is that we can increase that number significantly by matching learners online in teams of 2-3 and giving them a real project to build together. On top…
2016 · its alternatives →
- 14
Hey Hacker News, I'm the maker of Kopage, a free & self-hosted Website Builder. While working on new, cool features (AI, of course), it would be great to hear some HN feedback :) Thanks, Simon
2024 · kopage.com · its alternatives →
- 15TE
I have been running some experiments on twitch.tv along the lines of driving traffic to websites via donations. Many streamers will read a message attached to a donation of a certain amount of money on stream in front of all their viewers. Sometimes they will visit a url if that happens to be in the content of the message. On rare occasions they will even share the url with the rest of the stream. I would consider my most recent experiment a success. I follow and watch a few streamers on twitch that play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Three of the streamers I watch recently created a…
2015 · its alternatives →
- 16IW
TL;DR: https://infstream.com/?code=HN Hi HN – we’re Ben & Callum from Infstream. We’ve always been heavy users of YouTube, for entertainment, education and sharing. Towards the end of last year, we saw more and more horror stories of YouTubers losing their livelihood to the ad algorithm. We decided to build a content-first video platform, which aims to reduce issues by removing advertisers from the equation. Instead, we charge for the content you watch – bold, I know. Instead of paying in advertising and data, users on Infstream build their own streaming package, a channel at…
2020 · its alternatives →
- 17
Show HN submissions peaked at 6.3x their ChatGPT-launch level, while the number of successful submissions remained relatively flat.
Aug 2026 · orangecrumbs.com · its alternatives →
- 18
Hey HN, After GPT-3 created waves in the tech industry, a lot of AI tools were emerging and with that, some AI website builders But the results seemed way too generic to us. It felt like the developers were rushing to catch the wave instead of building a proper tool We took our time, did months of RnD and finally came up with something better than what others in the market are doing. It’s got better design output. While it’s still in beta, I wanted to show HN what we did. Will appreciate the feedback when you guys try it out. Here is the link to signup for the beta:…
2024 · dorik.com · its alternatives →
- 19IM
2019 · devcrato.com · its alternatives →
- 20BA
Hey HN, I'm Mehul, founder of codedamn. I'm glad to release codedamn creator (https://creator.codedamn.com/) in public beta today - the first (and only?) interactive course creating platform available to create truly interactive programming courses. Unlike existing solutions of embedding iframes from different code execution services, we have built the whole system from the ground up - allowing the course students to work inside a powerful in-browser editor solving code challenges. This will enable you to create highly interactive courses on virtually any topic. Want to teach…
2021 · its alternatives →
- 21
Live Streaming Made Better for Developers, Events & Ed-tech
2025 · zenstream.live · its alternatives →
- 22IP
Hi HN, I’m Ashu, founder of VideoDB. I’ve spent a big chunk of my life building video infrastructure. Not video creation. Video plumbing. The stuff you only learn after production breaks: timebases, VFR, keyframes, audio sync drift, container quirks, partial uploads, live streams, retries, backpressure, codecs, ffmpeg flags, cost blowups, and “why is this clip unseekable on one player but fine on another”. This week we shared VideoDB Skills, a skill pack that lets AI agents call those infra primitives directly, instead of you wiring pipelines with screenshots plus FFmpeg glue. Repo:…
Mar 2026 · its alternatives →
- 23WV
Hey everyone, my friend and I created a GitHub Wrapped video for developers to showcase their activity on the platform in a more fun way. The implementation is open-source (https://github.com/rendleyhq/github-wrapped-2024) if you're interested in how it was built. To get a bit geeky, we used masks, keyframe animations, luma key shaders to remove the background from the confetti video, and some other techniques. Also, everything is rendered directly in the browser!! I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the rendering performance, especially if you're running this on your…
2024 · rendley.com · its alternatives →
- 24MS
linkrdr (www.linkrdr.com), a personal link aggregator, was directly inspired by http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3555923 I read while browsing on HN. It's still a bit rough, but the concept is an interesting one and people have already shown interest. Let me know what you think. Also, if anyone knows a good UX designer, email me :)
2012 · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →