MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: I built a Finances app for Mac where you own the SQLite database
by steveharrison | 2026-01-13 13:30:41+00:00
Hey HN,

I feel like there is a gap in personal finance apps: local-first options typically have less polished UIs, while those with great design like Monarch Money are not local-first. This app fills the gap by providing a modern UI like Monarch/Monzo along with a database that you can hack around with outside of the app. File > app!

- Local-first: transactions are stored in an encrypted SQLite database on your Mac, so you can read/write to it with Claude Code or your favourite DB client.

- Link transactions to merchants manually or automatically with https://ntropy.com to add sensible merchant names, brand icons, categories, GPS locations (e.g. converting "APPLE STORE R238 R238 SYDNEY" into "Apple Store, Sydney | Electronics | 367 George St, Sydney NSW 2000 | Parent: Apple")

- Map view with clustering to see how much you’ve spent in different locations.

- Enrich Uber transactions with pickup/drop-off details

- macOS inspired UX patterns like dragging transactions into folders or tags. It's an Electron + React app so think 1Password-style UI.

Once you link your transactions to merchants, you can run SQL queries like "What's my total Uber spend this year?" or ask questions about your spending with Claude Code (just get it to decrypt & read the database).

I’m starting with CSV and OFX file import, with syncing (Plaid, etc.) coming next.

You can download the Mac app at https://thefinances.app. To auto-enrich transactions via the API, you can go to Finances > Settings and add this demo licence key, KESC-9QQU-VU0X-EGJP-N373.

Let me know what you think!
by kayo_20211030 | 2026-01-13 13:30:52+00:00
A really good piece.

It's funny how fortuitous timing often dictates outcomes.

The piece says about CP/M:

> The early business microcomputer industry ran on it and essentially nothing else

The users in the "hobbyist" market, which was very distinct from the "commercial" market at that time, probably couldn't afford CP/M anyway. There was between the two markets, at that time, some, but not a great deal of convergence. With the introduction of the cheaper 8088, the commercial and the hobbyist market was starting to converge. Whatever OS ran on that chip and its successors, and whatever was priced reasonably, would win. (that's hindsight, but still true in retrospect)

I believe that even if CP/M-86 were delivered on time, and its price-point wasn't set correctly, there wouldn't have been the same convergence. However, DOS was priced correctly and there was no exclusivity to IBM, and boom!, we were off to the races where hobbyists devs could migrate to commercial development with all their knowledge and experience being relevant; make the money, and do great things.

The episode created a pipeline which still exists today.
by allreduce | 2026-01-13 13:31:02+00:00
Not easy to learn is a bit of a red herring imo. Its also a disproportionate amount of stuff to hold in your head once you have learned it for what it is.

An OS is first of all is a set of primitives to accomplish other things. What classic worse-is-better Unix does really well is do just enough to make you able to get on with whatever those things are. Write some C program to gather some simulation data, pipe its output to awk or gnuplot to slice it. Maybe automate some of that workflow with a script or two.

Current tools can do a bit more and can do it nicer or more rigorously sometimes, but you loose the brutal simplicity of a bunch of tools all communicating with the same conventions and interfaces. Instead you get a bunch of big systems all with their own conventions and poor interop. You've got Systemd and the other Redhat-isms with their custom formats and bad CLI interfaces. You've got every programming language with it's own n package managers.
A bunch of useful stuff sure, but encased in a bunch of reinvented infrastructure and conventions.
by pndy | 2026-01-13 13:31:03+00:00
Looking at various discussions, I'd say there's enough to attempt to steer narrations. In some cases users bury comments from such accounts rightfully with downvotes. But it's not just discussions - there are accounts submitting nothing but single-themed content to spread particular themes.

My account isn't that much old but I was lurking around for years and I can say that quality of content and comments has significantly dropped in last 5 years. I'd guess it's because people running away from reddit settled here, because HN serves more generic stuff - with help of notorious spammers who surely get paid for uploading content from big media outlets every few hours.
by philipallstar | 2026-01-13 13:31:19+00:00
> Mozilla was born to change this, and Firefox succeeded beyond what most people thought possible — dropping Internet Explorer’s market share to 55% in just a few years and ushering in the Web 2.0 era.

Is this true? I can see from here[0] that its peak was 32%, as IE was really on the back burner but before Chrome had fully risen to dominance, but I wouldn't claim that it was responsible for IE's market share drop.

[0] https://mspoweruser.com/firefox-statistics
by rsynnott | 2026-01-13 13:32:07+00:00
I mean, assuming it's true, the obvious conclusion would be that there should be reasonable limits on what is done to save such a small industry. Looks like there are 40-45k people employed in coal mining in the US, depending on who you ask. _Even if there was no downside to keeping it going_, that would probably only be worth modest government action to keep it on life support; it's simply not a big industry.
by gus_massa | 2026-01-13 13:32:16+00:00
I mean the maximal length if both players play perfectly.

If the Kings advance in the 1)"b", 2) "d" or "e", 3) "g" column in a synchronized way, they form an horizontal wall of 3 ranks that will trap the Knight at the bottom of the board. This takes 5 * 3 to go from "7" to "2" plus 1 movements to take the Knight, so in 5 * 3 +1 = 16 they should win, and the maximal amount of movements for the Knight is also 16.

This use a little of hand waving, so I may be missing some corner case or brilliant strategy for the Knight. I also may be missing some obvious strategy for the Kings to win earlier. So add a few question marks here and there in the provious paragraph.

> I'm going to build out the reverse play when I find time in the next few weeks hopefully!

:)
by lotsofpulp | 2026-01-13 13:32:34+00:00
I haven't studied Andreessen's views and actions, so I was just positing a strategic reason for a change in political support for a high profile person. (as opposed to a drastic change in their thoughts which is what I take to mean as "radicalized")

For example, I have always preferred most of Democrats' positions on the national level, but on the local/state level, especially in California/Oregon/Washington, I disagree with a lot of the Democrat leaders, more and more since 2010 (I would say my views have not changed much, but the party's priorities at the state and local level have).

Of course, I'm nowhere near as influential as Andreessen nor do I have interests that would warrant a say in national politics, but I can see why if one is against local leadership, they would cozy up to someone who they think can help you fight against them, without being "radicalized", per the above definition.
by andsoitis | 2026-01-13 13:32:49+00:00
> CO2/land mass as the USA

I'm trying, but really struggling, to understand your logic of anchoring on land area.

Can you explain why you think that's a better metric than per capita? Is it because there are climate-changing emissions that are NOT driven by humans (e.g. seasonal wildfires, volcanic eruptions, etc.)? Or is it something else?
by arethuza | 2026-01-13 13:33:08+00:00
I actually think that the process around Scottish independence actually demonstrates that the UK is actually relatively sane - a part of the country wanted to consider independence, the government at the time said "OK you can have a referendum", the referendum was held and Scotland voted to stay in the UK.

I was, and still am, a support of Scottish independence but I how the whole thing was handled reflects pretty well on the UK as a whole.
by hare2eternity | 2026-01-13 13:33:10+00:00
I would imagine we'll see a greater emphasis on muscularity. Already 'skinny fat' has long been a pejorative for slim people that hadn't 'earned' it (whatever 'it' is). Like just about everything, supply and demand will determine desirability. In a world where no-one is overweight being slim is no longer a desirable differentiator.
by marcusjt | 2026-01-13 13:35:13+00:00
Your Roku had to "boot" for 10s - why? Would resume from standby in a couple of seconds, so you've chosen to slow yourself down.

My TCL TV runs Android/Google TV, wakes from standby in 2s while also waking the surround in ~3s via HDMI CEC (and I don't need to hear anything until I've chosen something to play) so really it only take me 2s before I can start to open a streaming app (via a button on my remote) vs your 16s to get to the same point.

It's the choosing what to play that's the slow bit for me - every app puts what you were last watching in a different place, and not all apps notify Google TV so its own attempt at letting you resume is incomplete...

It also frustrates me that profiles streaming apps don't link to profiles for the OS (e.g. Google TV) - seems obvious to me that by now they should all be seamlessly linked together in a way that delivers the most personalised experience, instead of muddling up everyone's profiles and watch history!
by moron4hire | 2026-01-13 13:35:28+00:00
The note that someone told them DataList might be bad for accessibility is the first I'm hearing of it. Does anyone know what is meant by this?

This reminds me of a problem I've been having with some accessibility issues: maybe, sometimes, occasionally, the accessibility problems a site has aren't the authors' fault but the fault of the folks writing the screen reader software. I've tried using screen reader software and it is an awful experience. It's nearly impossible to create a good experience for screen readers because they are all their own, unique microcosm of unstandardized garbage and bugs.
by cmiles8 | 2026-01-13 13:35:30+00:00
This is a pretty gross mis characterization of what’s happening. There’s been a lot written about the fluff that is a lot of these AI company “purchases” of “green” energy. In practice there’s no way to get that power from (insert middle of nowhere location with green energy plant) to (insert location of AI datacenter) so to actually power the data center the utility is forced to power on some clunky old coal plant to keep the chips powered.

The AI company is issuing press releases saying how they bought all this clean power but in practice they just forced some old clunky power plants back online to meet their demand.
by andsoitis | 2026-01-13 13:36:12+00:00
> China population is 4 times of US

This is a fair criticism of per capita US emissions.

> a lot of CO2 there comes from US outsourcing energy-intensive production

This is not a reasonable indictment of US per capita emissions. China chooses to manufacture for the US and the world. Consumption, by the US, but importantly, also the rest of the world would be less if China didn't do cheap manufacturing at scale.
Show HN: A Markdown Viewer for the LLM Era (Mermaid and LaTeX)
by Igor_Wiwi | 2026-01-13 13:36:18+00:00
Client-side Markdown viewer built for reading and sharing documents with diagrams and math.

It supports GitHub-flavored Markdown, Mermaid diagrams, and LaTeX rendering directly in the browser. The scope is intentionally narrow: viewing Markdown clearly, without turning it into a full editor.

Feedback is welcomed
by anovikov | 2026-01-13 13:36:22+00:00
Well, after WWII, America saved the world from the spectre of Communism, firstly by blunt threat of total nuclear annihilation (which was sadly never put in practice when it could be), then when it became impossible, by continuous overt and covert work to undermine it, until success in 1991.

I come from the Soviet Union and i know what i'm talking about. Blessed are those who never had to live under this dystopian system of dehumanisation and torture - and if not US efforts, sometimes heavy-handed and sometimes not so, a lot more countries if not all the world would be subject to it.

It won't be much of a 'conflict'. No one except US had much power to resist.
by fidotron | 2026-01-13 13:36:32+00:00
This reads a lot like post CES submarine PR, having worked in this exact space.

To date the market for these things simply hasn't had traction, at all, despite it being a long term dream of many display manufacturers. They also cannot resist the urge to go all in on inevitable privacy invasion stupidity, because they believe all the others will do it and so undercut them.

Oddly the generative AI wave is exactly what the marketing people thought they were missing when I was involved, since they wanted you to be able to describe something and have it just appear. Now you actually could.
by cess11 | 2026-01-13 13:36:43+00:00
One of my main uses for text browsers is scraping. They are typically lightweight and efficient, easy to script against, and I won't end up with premature optimisations where I immediately parse out small pieces of information and discard the rest of the page. Instead I store the dumps and can return to them at a later time when the problem domain changes or I have learned more about it.
by tomislav | 2026-01-13 13:37:24+00:00
Senior iOS Developer

Location: Croatia

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: 17 years of iOS development, Swift, Objective-C

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomislavf/

GitHub: https://github.com/tomislav

Email: tf@7sols.com

Lead iOS developer for multiple award-winning apps, featured by Apple, The New York Times and Forbes. Working remotely for distributed companies for the last 12 years.
by oblio | 2026-01-13 13:37:56+00:00
Which, if you think about it, is a mostly uplifting timeline.

Back in 1770 there were basically 0 democracies on the planet. In 1790 there were 2. Now there are about 70 with about 35 more somewhere in between democracy and autocracy. So most of the world's population is living under a form of democracy. I know that things are degrading for many big democracies, but it wouldn't be the first time (the period between WW1 until the end of WW2 was a bad time for democracies).

I have no idea how we get from here to a civilized internet, though.
Show HN: Respilens.com displays flu, COVID-19 and RSV forecasts for US states
by wosk | 2026-01-13 13:39:04+00:00
TL;DR: weather forecasts but for respiratory disease. Interpret with caution :)

Hey HN,

Every year during the respiratory disease season (winter in the northern hemisphere), the CDC runs challenges where teams -- academics, mostly, but also government and companies -- submit forecasts of the disease burden each week. These are 4-week-ahead forecasts.

We (Emily and I, Joseph) built RespiLens.com as a static website to display these forecasts all in one place with a nicer interface than what is generally provided [1].

Forecasting respiratory disease is challenging, so please interpret forecasts with caution (see how bad it was in the last season).

This website is quite early stage, but we have been using it internally for a year and are starting to build it in public now. We are very much looking for your comments, especially as most folk who have seen it/use it are in the public-health space.

We are not SWEs, so there might be a ton we can improve on the website.

There is also the RespiLens.com/Forecastle, a Wordle-type game to see how good you are at forecasting vs the current state of the art. Interested in what you think of that.

Technically, our GitHub repo is here https://github.com/ACCIDDA/RespiLens, and it's quite straightforward:
* we pull forecasts from each hub GitHub; this is facilitated by the HubVerse, an initiative to standardize these challenges (https://hubverse.io)
* we serve this with a Mantine Web App. Claude Code and other LLMs were heavily used to create the front-end. It is a good use case because we can do QA as know what it should look like as I have dozens of Python scripts for these plots.

Feel free to ask questions! or suggest features.

[1] hubverse provides an automatic dashboard, and the CDC displays forecasts on their website under a set of conditions (good coverage). See RespiLens.com info hub for link.

Best,
Joseph
by Spare_account | 2026-01-13 13:39:14+00:00
https://www.britannica.com/question/How-is-the-USPS-funded

>the USPS faced financial difficulties, posting losses of $6.5 billion in fiscal 2023 and $8 billion in fiscal 2024, leading to a request for $14 billion in government assistance.

It would appear that the USPS operates at a loss at these prices
by Fnoord | 2026-01-13 13:40:18+00:00
The URL and title give it away:

URL starts with 'ai' and the title claims 'is' and 'the new version control.'

I then skimmed through the article, and it mentions it doesn't exist today.

First, it requires an implementation to prove the point, and then it has to defeat the network effect of git. There is zero proof for that argument, only a hypothesis. (Which sums up AI hype pretty well.) Someone's trying to hype AI, just like someone was hyping blockchain. GLHF w/that. Oh, and thank you for ruining the hardware market, assholes.
by oblio | 2026-01-13 13:40:22+00:00
RMS is probably greatly behind the technical news at this point. I mean, he's surfing the web via a email summary of some websites. Even if he doesn't condone of how the internet is evolving, he can't really keep up with technology if he doesn't "mingle".

He's also 72, we can't expect him to save everyone. We need new generations of FOSS tech leaders.
by bluGill | 2026-01-13 13:40:44+00:00
I get significant pain when I sit fully upright. If I must fly I need to recline. I've been to a doctor (and had surgery...) but the pain is there and reclining is required for minimal comfort. Deal with it, the seats are small, but my seat is going to affect you, you are just a jerk for thinking you need that extra space.
by mabid2601 | 2026-01-13 13:41:04+00:00
I've made a simple game launcher that can launch almost any game.

It is e x t r e m e l y lightweight and is literally one singular .jar file and a folder that will be created next to the file (if you add any games to it, that is).

Add a game, set it's root directory, tell how to launch it by giving the launcher launch commands (i.e. hl -width 1280 -height 720), and you're done.

It will even track the total time played since you added the game to the game launcher.

https://github.com/alhilajmedia-dotcom/mabids-game-launcher/...

Please give me feedback, you can roast me all you want.
by gus_massa | 2026-01-13 13:41:12+00:00
Br2 is probably useful for bleaching too.

I used tiny amounts in the lab a lot of years ago, but it was disolved in carbon tetrachloride IIRC. It's a strong oxidant like Cl2, to Br2 may be good for bleaching, or destroy your cloths, or be very toxic in big amounts, or ...

I'm not sure you can dissolve Br2 in water. Cl2 is strange because in water it transform into ClH and ClOH so it dissolves nicely in a solution of NaOH to neutralize the acids. I'm not sure if Br2 has a similar reaction. So Br2 may be impractical (and perhaps to toxic) as a bleach alternative.

Disclaimer: Don't try this at home.
by GJim | 2026-01-13 13:41:43+00:00
I'll certainly give you that. We have a (reasonably!) healthy democracy in Blighty, despite our grumblings.

Though it's fair to say that had the referendum been held more recently, Russian interference would have been orders of magnitude more severe. I'm not sure what the solution is to protect against such interference. (That is, interference in the worlds democracies, not just ours).
by Priotecs | 2026-01-13 13:42:12+00:00
That’s a fair point. Automated bank imports sound essential at first, especially with many accounts and cards.

In practice, though, I found them less useful for budgeting than expected. A bank statement tells you how much was spent and where, but not what the expense actually was. “$100 at a supermarket” could be groceries, pet food, a lawn mower, or business expenses — that context is what makes budgeting meaningful, and it usually has to be added manually anyway.

At that point, entering the expense directly with the right category often turned out to be simpler and more accurate for me. Automated access would still be nice for reconciliation, but it’s not the silver bullet it’s often perceived to be.
by srmarm | 2026-01-13 13:42:41+00:00
That's exactly how it usually happens in my experience. I think a lot of people are OK if everyones upright on short haul flights (here most budget airlines don't have a recline facility and it's not missed) but once someone reclines into your space you then recline to gain a little space back and the domino effect takes place even if you're not sleeping.
by mdavid626 | 2026-01-13 13:42:49+00:00
You can't be with your child 100% of the time. They are spending significant time with others, e.g. in school. Those people you can't control.

Doomscrolling or porn is just too "appealing" to children, like sugar. Children don't have their minds fully developed to be able to say "no" to them.

If in school everybody has a smartphone and does doomscrolling, your children will do as well. Or they'll be ostracised.
by tdeck | 2026-01-13 13:43:56+00:00
A lot of the racist and islamophobic talking points get exported from the US, then they seem to mull around in Europe for a while, and eventually the US right wing points at what the right is saying there (particularly in the UK) and reimports the rhetoric, often as if it's now solid evidence.

It happened with anti-vax as well. I remember finding it very striking when I started hearing US anti-vaxxers refer to "the jab" in 2020. That's a term we never used in American English.
by cheeseomlit | 2026-01-13 13:43:58+00:00
>it is designed to protect UK citizens

Is that really what it's designed for?

And as far as the PRISM comparison goes, I'd rather mass surveillance not be done at all, but if it's being done no matter what I'd rather it be illegitimate than official policy. At least they have to jump through some hoops for parallel construction that way, and it doesn't normalize the practice as morally/socially acceptable- it's a "secret" because its embarrassing and shameful for it to exist in a "free" society. If its not a secret and nobody is ashamed of it then you dont even have the pretense of a free society anymore
by Priotecs | 2026-01-13 13:44:08+00:00
Thanks! That’s funny, because while it’s technically a GmbH, it’s really just me — a one-person company.

I originally set it up mainly for risk separation. Before the apps, I was developing backup software, and having a legal structure felt like the responsible thing to do. It also looked more professional at the time. Whether I’d do it again today, I’m honestly not sure.

That said, keeping personal and business finances clearly separated has definitely been a good decision in the long run.
by andsoitis | 2026-01-13 13:44:11+00:00
> You're probably right that a general degrowth strategy wouldn't ever be popular, but I bet a policy that say restricted AI and cryptocurrency with the aim of reducing electricity prices would be.

That's arbitrary. If you went back in time before AI and crypto, which industries would you pick to constrain growth or development of?

Is it whatever the latest industry is that is driving incremental emissions? If so, I don't know that it is a compelling mental model, because that is a degrowth mindset.