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dbzon Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)

I have been working on cost models and coupon ladders for businesses.

If either of those are interesting to you, please reach out!

For example, I am helping some restaurants learn exactly how much each item on the menu costs, what the margins are, and how much profit each dish is bringing in because I integrate with their PoS system.

https://imgur.com/a/C127GOY

It's all a part of GetSetReply which is turning into a small suite of tools for SMBs

https://GetSetReply.com

dbzon Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

I just passed the 1M lines of code mark using Claude for this project!

https://www.GetSetReply.com

I help small businesses with review management. Getting more reviews, replying to reviews, and some other related features.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how to get users and make sales. I'd love advice from someone in the community that is willing to share their experience and wisdom!

Similarly, if there are folks here from outside of the US with some ideas/feedback on getting into other markets, I'm interested to hear about that too.

The other project I've been working on is:

https://ALovelyQuestion.com

We plan proposals within your budget

dbzon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)

Thank you! Happy to answer any questions. I built https://ALovelyQuestion.com using Claude Design.

dbzon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)

I've got two projects:

https://ALovelyQuestion.com

We create a plan for your marriage proposal. I'm working with an event planner to create this!

https://GetSetReply.com

This does review aggregation for businesses, and then a bunch of tools to help you gain insights, respond to reviews, and get more reviews. I just hired my first Sales/Marketing person to scale.

I will create coupon codes for anyone interested! Email is in my bio

dbzon Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)

https://www.GetSetReply.com

If you have a business that relies on reviews, I'm looking for a beta tester!

GetSetReply.com aims to:

1. Get you more reviews

2. Avoid negative reviews

3. Respond to reviews

You can email me via my email in my profile.

dbzon Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)

https://www.GetSetReply.com

I'm actually looking for beta users! GetSetReply is a SaaS I've been building. It does two things for small businesses:

1. It helps you get more reviews by sending automated requests for reviews to your customers over SMS and/or email after they purchase from you (PoS Integrated / Manual Sending)

2. The second is helping you reply to the reviews you already have with AI-generated drafts in your brand's voice that you can send to Google/Yelp/TripAdvisor.

I'm very grateful to anyone who is willing to test or provide feedback. If you create an account (it's free with no credit card or integrations required), I'll reach out! Or you can email me via my email in my profile.

dbzon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)

I'm building a platform for businesses to get more reviews and deflect negative reviews:

https://GetSetReply.com/

I am hoping to launch in about a week, so I would love any user feedback! (email in profile)

dbzon I'll pay you to read my book (2013)

I aim to read 30+ books a year. Do you have a list of recommendations (for any reason) or favorites?

dbzon iTerm2 has a new drawing engine that uses Metal 2

Is there somewhere we can view the feature roadmap for this? Will iTerm2 support ligatures at some point in the future? I'm also interested in future performance enhancements, and a comparison to terminal.

dbzon Ask HN: Engineering team consists of all friends

It looks like you are getting downvoted, but there is a lot of truth in what you are saying. I have lots of anecdotal evidence of my peers leaving their jobs for new ones that pay a lot more. The very senior/principal engineers have even been offered large amounts of money/stock to stay, but by that point it's too late. The best path to getting raises starting from a junior engineer is to leave for a new company. There are many benefits I can list to stay at one company (network, growth as an engineer, etc.), but promotions and pay raises aren't part of that list with few exceptions.

dbzon Dev Bootcamp is shutting down

Former A/a grad here. The average graduating salary in SF for App Academy is 105k [1]. They charge around 20% which is 21k. They also have other revenue streams, so on average they likely make more per student on average than that.

[1] https://www.appacademy.io/

dbzon Show HN: Tesoro – Personal internet archive

This is pretty cool. I have a chrome extension that let's you view the cached version of a web page [1]. Would I be able to use this through an API? I currently support Google Cache, WayBack Machine, and CoralCDN, but Coral doesn't work well and I'd like to replace it with something else.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cmmlgikpahieigpccl...

dbzon Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

C02 is one of the worst 'dirty' emissions (methane is worse), and C02 is the most important gas for controlling the earth's temperature - http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/page5....

"The current episode of global warming is attributed to increasing emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into Earth's atmosphere. " - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_at...

Also in the first few lines of wikipedia you will see that C02 is only 0.04% of the atmosphere. This small percentage has huge effects.

dbzon Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?

Yes they do. I'm a recent App Academy graduate and everyone gets a job. There are a lot of benefits to doing a program like this versus a classical CS education. I've been programming since 8th grade, and I was a computer science major before I dropped out of college. I remember having CS professors that couldn't code themselves out of a box, but they "taught" the material they were supposed to teach. App Academy and other bootcamps prepare you for real world jobs by teaching you how to code. They also teach you data structures and algorithms- not as much as a computer science degree might, but by learning how to code, you learn how to look things up and apply them. If you're wondering if you should do it or not, it's definitely a yes. If you have any questions I would love to answer them.

dbzon Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?

I'm an App Academy graduate, and I've also been programming since 8th grade. App Academy targets the shortcomings of a CS degree by teaching people HOW to code. Students are supposed to come out of App Academy with 1000 hours of coding or 1/10 of mastery. App Academy has lectures on algorithms and data structures that aren't equivalent to a CS degree, but graduates can code, and many if not most CS students can not. These programs are very rigorous, and I can tell you without a doubt they are only growing, and certainly aren't going anywhere. If the market correct's itself, it is going to be on the "School" side, because CS degree education is broken.

dbzon China Just Blocked Thousands of Websites

Does anyone know if Cache Databases are blocked? I made a chrome extension called WebCache that views the cached version of a webpage which would be helpful if Google Cache, Wayback Machine, or Coral CDN isn't blocked. Here is the source: https://github.com/Dbz/WebCache

dbzon Poll: What level of math is programming roughly analogous to?

I have a slight problem with the question. Math is used when programming or creating models, but both are tools. I find it hard to compare the two in the way you're asking, so I think this poll is bogus. Programming requires abstract thinking as does math at the algebra level and beyond (more so at the calculus level and beyond). Other than asking what level of math is required to program X, it's hard to ask what cognitive level quantified by mathematical ability is required because cognitive levels both aren't easily quantifiable and also don't directly correlate with mathematical ability. There are lots of ways to do the same thing.

As for me, I have taken math to the level of Differential Equations and Linear Algebra.

dbzon The Great Language Game: How many languages can you distinguish between?

I'd love to see some stats on how others have done. Also, it would be nice if you didn't have to press back fifty times (or long click select) to go back to the last site you were on.

dbzon How To Create Your Own Chrome Extensions

Cool! I'd like to share my little extension! It let's you view the cached version of a webpage with Google Cache, Coral CDN, or Wayback Machine with a click of a button.

https://github.com/Dbz/WebCache

P.S. if anyone knows how I could add more cache databases like bing cache or yahoo cache, please tell me because I couldn't figure it out.

EDIT: If anyone is willing to test the Coral CDN, I'd greatly appreciate it. For some reason Coral CDN doesn't work on my browser, so I've never tested it =`[

dbzon Show HN: Napster.fm, Napster reimagined for the modern Web

I don't see how this is reimagined. It offers nothing that spotify or soundcloud doesn't. It's also slower, but you're on the front page of HN, so that's forgivable, but I wouldn't wait 10 seconds for something to load if I wanted to use it regularly and there were great alternatives (check out soundcloud). There are much much more important features in a music player than real-time syncing.

dbzon There’s no money in 3D printing

I simply left the webpage after scrolling up and down a few times in confusion with my arrow keys. I don't believe I've ever missed important content after leaving from a webpage that can't give me a proper user experience.

dbzon No one-click unsubscribe? It's spam.

Tangentially related: you can create a filter to search for emails with the word "unsubscribe" in them. Generally speaking I don't want to read anything with "unsubscribe" in it, and when I do, I have a nice folder for it.

dbzon It will take a 'baby elephant' to knock over this bike [video]

So, you could add gyroscopes to a motorcycle and there would be no difference.

dbzon Ask HN: I want to build a cable company. How would I get started?

It might be helpful for you to post a lot of your ideas here. Big cable companies aren't going to steal them and people here may offer improvements.

dbzon Oxygen nucleus with twice as many neutrons shown to be stable

24O has a half life of 65ms, so "24O isn't especially stable. If you look at that table, 23O has a half life of 82 ms, 22O is 2.25 s, and the isotopes gradually get more stable as you approach the stable 16-17-18 isotopes. If it were more stable than 23O, I would agree that it would be surprising, but that's not the case. In fact, if you look at what they did and read the abstract for the actual paper, the claimed novelty here isn't creating 24O (as others have done so before) or about how stable it is, but rather that they came up with a new technique to characterize it. The article's title is misleading." Said chaos386 on reddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/14hz9v/oxygen_nucle...

dbzon A Tutorial on Anonymous Email Accounts

There is also Tor Mail as an anonymous email service.

dbzon An ABC proof too tough even for mathematicians

Can anyone explain what "inter-universal geometry" is?

dbzon What Happens to Stolen Bicycles?

My guess is that bikes will get GPS devices put in them eventually. Then people will be able to track their routes etc. Maybe when that happens, people will be able to track their stolen bikes.

dbzon Show HN: DeadMouse – Surf the web with just your keyboard.

A major improvement would be that once you type something (for example GIT), and then pause for a few seconds, you can begin typing something else (such as XKCD).

dbzon "Do Not Track" for Chrome

I find this to be a very important extension....I would be surprised if Adblock didn't have this built in though.