Friday, August 25, 2023

Show HN: A simple web app to combat phone addiction https://ift.tt/l3xXeFp

Show HN: A simple web app to combat phone addiction When I'm stuck on coding something, I find myself reaching for my phone even if I don't have any particular reason to do so. Inspired by Calm's DoNothingFor2Minutes.com which launched on HN 13 years ago [1], I made this simple webapp to see if my friends and I could go an hour without touching our phones. It is surprisingly difficult. According to a 2022 survey [2], the average US adult picks up their phone 352 times per day, or approximately once every 2m43s while they're awake. On browsers that support it (iOS 16.4+, most versions of Android Chrome), it uses the Screen Wake Lock API [3] to keep the page open, and falls back to nosleep.js [4] otherwise. From testing on my iPhone 14 Pro Max running iOS 16.6, battery life only went down 3 or 4 percentage points after an hour with the wake lock. Made this as a web app as a quick demo to be compatible across all mobile devices. As an app, we can probably save more on battery + not have the screen on. One caveat is that on iOS this will actually increase your Screen Time (although hopefully reduce your other category usage). I currently only track time on page through Google Analytics 4. No other calls are made to a server, although if we actually wanted to verify that you kept the page open vs. javascript/inspector-system clock-fu, we could add a verified mode that pings the server every X minutes. As a PWA, possibly due to an iOS/Mobile Safari quirk/bug [5], neither wake lock nor nosleep.js appear to work . [1] https://ift.tt/OR2BGnU [2] https://ift.tt/eoj5dIL [3] https://ift.tt/7DH6YEj... [4] https://ift.tt/utwsbW3 [5] https://ift.tt/JzUjsdp https://ift.tt/GkAFsOl August 25, 2023 at 02:15AM

Show HN: Collie – A minimal RSS reader just for you https://ift.tt/p5EY2dg

Show HN: Collie – A minimal RSS reader just for you Collie is a minimal RSS feed reader application running on your desktop. With Collie, you can subscribe to multiple RSS/Atom feeds to organize your own news feed, receive a real-time notification when a new item is added to the subscribed feed, and save the items to read again or later. All you need is a local machine and the Internet. No virtual machine, no cloud infrastructures, no always-on database, and no account registration with privacy information required. I've been getting tech news from HackerNews, Lobsters, etc. on Twitter (It's X now, but I'll keep calling it Twitter anyway), but many of them have been terminated due to changes in Twitter's API policy. I went from place to place: Bluesky, Mastodon, Slack, and newsletter. However, I couldn't settle anywhere. The social media services such as Bluesky and Mastodon had too many unnecessary features as news feed. Slack RSS was good to get the news in real-time, but the notifications mixed with other workspaces overwhelmed me. The newsletters gave me a lot of high-quality information, but not in real-time. Then, I remembered Miniflux, the "minimalist and opinionated feed reader" that I had used past. This is the best option for my goal, but I had to pay for the hosted version or keep running docker machine on my local computer which did not have enough resources. Additionally, I didn't need a system that maintains multi-user sessions. Eventually, I had no choice but to create my own application, and that's why I made Collie, the minimal RSS reader just for me. https://ift.tt/PG0DQpd August 25, 2023 at 10:58AM

Show HN: Convert Text, PDF, Docs, Scan or Image to Speech https://ift.tt/YEjvURg

Show HN: Convert Text, PDF, Docs, Scan or Image to Speech https://ift.tt/EFvc2tY August 24, 2023 at 11:13PM

Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web https://ift.tt/7YZJTAR

Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web Hi, I’m Chris, one of the co-founders of Shimmer. Last October, following my ADHD diagnosis, I launched Shimmer ( https://shimmer.care ), one-to-one ADHD Coaching for adults. Our HN launch was here: https://ift.tt/bAdcfBP . A quick recap before I dive into our new launch: Shimmer is an ADHD coaching service for adults. We took apart the traditionally expensive, inaccessible ADHD coaching offering ($300-600+/session) and redesigned it from first principles. You get matched with one of our expert ADHD coaches, meet weekly over video, and get supported throughout the week via text and with learning tools. This solution is special to me personally (and our community) because it doesn’t just give you “knowledge” or offer another “tool”—our coaches help you set realistic goals, take personalized steps towards it, and keep you accountable. Today we’re excited to launch our most-request feature: Web. Over the past 9 months, we learned (and iterated) a lot with our members and coaches. A few key challenges pointed to the need for a web version: (1) ADHD “object permanence” challenges (e.g. out of sight out of mind), we needed to be multi-platform so when you finish a task or goal or encounter a challenge, regardless of if you’re near your laptop or phone, you can check it off & ping your coach right away, (2) members used reflection modules (e.g. after each task, you’re prompted to reflect on what worked and didn’t work, and it informs your coach) more thoroughly than we originally anticipated, and web allows for deeper reflection and typing, (3) overarching coaching goals were often forgotten during the day-to-day, and the web makes it easier to use visual cues to keep goals top of mind for motivation, (4) many of our members struggle with phone addiction and driving members to the mobile app ended them up in Tiktok/IG, whereas the web app offers a focused environment to get in their “coaching zone”. Our new web app was designed alongside over 1,200 members, 22 coaches, countless hours of testing and iterating. We’re excited (but nervous!) to unveil this new version. If you have ADHD (or think you do), we’d love for you to check out our platform and give us critical feedback (or positive reinforcement!). It’s a super streamlined and ADHD-friendly signup process and in honor of our web launch and back to school/work, the first month is 30% off. Our pricing: $115/mo. for Essentials plan (15-min weekly sessions), $230/mo. for Standard plan (30-min weekly sessions), $345/mo. for Immersive plan (45-min weekly sessions); all plans additional 30% off first month, HSA/FSA-eligible. We know these prices are expensive for many people with ADHD and we’re committed to bringing costs down over time. It’s more affordable than what many people are paying for coaches, but the fact that we’re relying on humans, and not going the “we can automate all this with AI” route, puts a floor on how low the costs can drop. That said, here are some actions we’re taking to drive down costs for those who need it: (1) we offer needs-based scholarships and aim to have 5% of members on them at any time, (2) we often run fully sponsored scholarships with our partners—over 40 full ride scholarships and 100 group coaching spots have been disbursed alongside Asian Mental Health Project, government of Canada, and more, and (3) we have aligned our coaching model alongside Health & Wellness Coaching, which is expected to be reimbursed in 2024. If you have ideas or expertise here, please reach out to me directly at chris@shimmer.care. On behalf of our small but mighty & passionate Shimmer team, I’m excited for the Hacker News community to share your thoughts, feedback, and ideas. If you feel comfortable, I’d also love to hear your personal ADHD story and what has worked / hasn’t worked for you. Co-founders Christal & Vikram https://ift.tt/2GFbX0w August 24, 2023 at 11:19PM

Thursday, August 24, 2023

Show HN: OnePrompt – Personal Assistant ChatBot Using GPT https://ift.tt/lOcGukw

Show HN: OnePrompt – Personal Assistant ChatBot Using GPT OnePrompt is an iOS application similar to ChatGPT, utilizing the OpenAI API. OnePrompt offers unique plugins of utilizing iOS native features through "function calling." It also allows users to create their own custom plugins. You can find more information about creating custom plugins for OnePrompt at https://ift.tt/JVZEL39 . https://ift.tt/IuHOVac August 24, 2023 at 08:57AM

Show HN: E-Ink Powered UK Rail Departure Board Using Badger 2040W https://ift.tt/rxWICAY

Show HN: E-Ink Powered UK Rail Departure Board Using Badger 2040W Hey HN community, I've recently embarked on a tinkering project that merges the versatility of the Badger 2040W with the practicality of an E-ink display. Inspired by the UK Rail departure boards, I've created an E-ink version that updates in real-time with departure information. Would love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, or similar projects you've come across! https://ift.tt/glBK5zj August 24, 2023 at 01:19AM

Show HN: Chat with GPT about medical issues, get answers from medical literature https://ift.tt/BgJiMkq

Show HN: Chat with GPT about medical issues, get answers from medical literature Clint is an open-sourced medical information lookup and reasoning tool. Clint enables a user to have an interactive dialogue about medical conditions, symptoms, or simply to ask medical questions. Clint helps connect regular health concerns with complex medical information. It does this by converting colloquial language into medical terms, gathering and understanding information from medical resources, and presenting this information back to the user in an easy-to-understand way. One of the key features of Clint is that its processing is local. It's served using GitHub pages and utilizes the user's OpenAI API key to make requests to directly to GPT. All processing, except for that done by the LLM, happens in the user's browser. I recently had a need to lookup detailed medical information and found myself spending a lot of time translating my understanding into the medical domain, then again trying to comprehend the medical terms. That gave me the idea that this could be a task for an LLM. The result is Clint. It's a proof-of-concept. I currently have no further plans for the tool. If it is useful to you as-is, great! If it is useful only to help share some ideas, that's fine too. https://ift.tt/Tqe4a2S August 24, 2023 at 04:45AM

Show HN: Anti-Cluely – Detect virtual devices and cheating tools on exam systems https://ift.tt/onuTQWR

Show HN: Anti-Cluely – Detect virtual devices and cheating tools on exam systems Anti-Cluely is a lightweight tool designed to detect common...