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tanepiperon Writing N-body gravity simulations code in Python

I built https://teskooano.space/ - so far I've not seen any big performance issues, and it's multiple bodies running happily at 120fps.

Now you're making me worry I'm not "physicsing" hard enough

tanepiperon Plain Vanilla Web

When I built my new project (https://teskooano.space) I decided to go all vanilla web for it.

No regrets, except I found myself also building a framework....

tanepiperon Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor

It's hard to give a price here, but essentially that's it - we already are doing the same with web templates with their live preview functionality.

We have planning coming up, and I still need to see how high the priority is on this period

tanepiperon Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor

Essentially templates, driven from a headless CMS with some ability to customise and print - instead of having to go to the headless CMS, or use some other tool to edit - in browser is nice. I've already looked at options but this is a build vs buy option.

tanepiperon Why can't HTML alone do includes?

My first ever website I wrote with mod_include and .shtml - updating a website was just adding a few tags.

Also I miss framesets - with that a proper sidebar navigation was easily possible.

tanepiperon Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor

Are you planning to open source or make a product? We're working with headless content solutions, and despite our best efforts to digitise everything - people on the floor still need physical copies of things.

Hooking up a good PDF editor for output is hard, but this is a nice solution.

tanepiperon Webflow makes GSAP 100% free – plus more updates

Nice development for the library, I've been using it in https://teskooano.space for ThreeJS camera transition - I'll have to check out this new stuff too

tanepiperon Whoops! I built a UI framework

This is also what I am doing in my day job - our team own a full-stack solution for a Headless CMS and delivery platform - with that we've had to build our bits of the tech stack that over time now allow us to offer it to more team - but with that we've also had to make parts more specific to the domain we work in.

It also starts to look like a framework in parts.

tanepiperon Whoops I build a UI framework

One of those things - you start writing an app, and end up with a framework. I'm not planning on releasing it, but thought it might be worth sharing

tanepiperon Pope Francis has died

https://newsthump.com/2025/04/21/pope-loses-will-to-live-aft...

tanepiperon Procedural Textures with Hash Functions

Very useful - I'm working on a 3D space engine (https://youtu.be/dJ7tK-M3he0?si=7U-5u1-raR6WFRQ1) and started with CPU textures before moving to GPU - some of the patterns for procedural generation aren't quite right (but my focus has been on the physics and lighting for now)

tanepiperon I gave up on self-hosted Sentry (2024)

This is also my opinion of Backstage. It's positioned as this easy-to-use open source tool for IDPs - but in reality, it's a product that needs a team to maintain it constantly.

tanepiperon 4chan Sharty Hack And Janitor Email Leak

4chan: Because even Something Awful had some kind of flawed moral compass

tanepiperon Public secrets exposure leads to supply chain attack on GitHub CodeQL

More like last year they laid off a whole bunch of people. We've been waiting for several open tickets on GitHub to be picked up, some were but seem to be abandoned and others just ignored.

tanepiperon The Child and the Shadow (1975) [pdf]

I've already used it as an example when talking to some people about our technology choices.

Sometimes - to be able to live in the societies we do, we have to accept that there's very little choice. But if you live in full awareness that every choice you make to participate in it, there is a cost and effect that someone else has to experience.

One is example is Social Media moderators - for us to not see the worst of humanity, they have to experience it for us and make a decision that literally can manipulate people's opinions and preferences

tanepiperon AITA for barely doing anything at work?

You've clearly never worked in large corporations - I'm almost 4 years in and I've learned:

  - Any advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic for a lot of "business users"
  - Decisions get made the speed of a tanker turning
  - Management decisions will usually cause projects to take a complete 180

A lot of the time it's large businesses wasting money, while efficient/good developers get frustrated. You have to learn to let it go.

tanepiperon Show HN: We made an MCP Server so that Cursor can build anything from API Docs

I'm still struggling at the moment to see where they fit in to the distributed nature of working with LLMs and other data sources.

For example, depending on the model I use in LMStudio - some can use tools, but it doesn't yet seem to support MCP - on the other hand, cursor does - but then either it's servers or via stdio - the setup isn't entirely clear.

Also it seems that giving random access to a LLM, even if local, via an intermediate server is ripe for abuse unless you know what it's doing?

tanepiperon The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

Laughs in European Consumer Protection

How's that "break regulation to innovate" working out for US?

tanepiperon I-cant-believe-its-not-webusb: Hacking around lack of WebUSB support in Firefox

A few years back I wrote a WebSerial/WebUSB app for fun - https://web-serial-app.netlify.app/

It still throws a 'Blue screen of Death' for Firefox

tanepiperon Show HN: Time Portal – Get dropped into history, guess where you landed

Videos had Japanese men, but the event was in China - Video generator must have just went with "generic asian warrior"

tanepiperon Send Data with Sound

The core idea was to work with a commercial TV broadcaster in to embed the codes in certain ads, or have it as part of a TV show - so the "listener" would need an active app to handle it.

If it had all gone off well, the eventual plan was to have it be used on a live show where users could also interact. We had some prototypes ready with a native app - but then the Brexit referendum happened - and our company had a couple of clients pull out of upcoming projects - and the company got shuttered.

tanepiperon [dead]

Not only dangerous but also unhinged - the way the "crowd" laughs like he's hosting a roast.

tanepiperon Send Data with Sound

12 years ago, I worked on this prototype - https://github.com/tanepiper/adOn-soundlib

The original plan was to develop essential "audio QR codes" that would allow short codes to be transmitted that could be parsed by certain apps and used to drive different interactions.

tanepiperon Hallucinations in code are the least dangerous form of LLM mistakes

One thing I've found is that while I work with a LLM and it can do things way faster than me, the other side of it is I'm quickly loosing understand of the deeper code.

If someone asks me a question about something I've worked on, I might be able to give an answer about some deep functionality.

At the moment I'm working with a LLM on a 3D game and while it works, I would need to rebuild it to understand all the elements of it.

For me this is my biggest fear - not that LLMs can code, but that they do so at such a volume that in a generation or two no one will understand how the code works.

tanepiperon TypeScript types can run DOOM [video]

I can also relate - I'm a tech lead, and it just also happens to be I find programming to be an enjoyable puzzle. When my wife sticks on some TV, I'll usually scratch an itch with some problem I've spotted, or some improvement that can be made - most of our docker build time improvements are me trying out different things and finding what works - same with little QoL features.

Props to the dev of this project though - in some ways this kind of project is one of those 'magnum opus' things - not many people might know or care about it, but it's actually something to be proud of achieving.

tanepiperon My failed attempt to shrink all NPM packages by 5%

Yep, I wrote a script that starts at a root `node_modules` folder and iterates through to remove anything not required (dotfiles, Dockerfile, .md files, etc) - in one of our smaller apps this removes about 25Mb of fluff, some packages are up to 60-70mb of crap removed.

tanepiperon The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

Honestly, if you are still using FizzBuzz in 2025 as a hiring question, you don't deserve the best developers. If you're still demanding a university-level education for a full stack developer you're going to be missing out on some great individual contributors.

I get that smaller companies can't afford to mis-hire, but they are also not a FAANG - when I read this, I doubt I would have passed.

tanepiperon Show HN: Cs16.css – CSS library based on Counter Strike 1.6 UI

When I was playing with WebSerial, I ended up using XP.css because it reminded me of configuring with old serial modems - I think the aesthetic works quite well.

https://web-serial-app.netlify.app/

(Source: https://github.com/tanepiper/web-serial-controller)

tanepiperon Omi – Thought to Action

Is this a trailer for Black Mirror's new season?

tanepiperon Many people can't hear "inner voices" or imagine common sounds

Meanwhile, some of us can have entire internal conversations and hear symphonies on demand (but then I personally have aphantasia so absolutely no ability to visualise with the mind)