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carlnewton commented on Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2025)?    · Posted by u/iryndin
carlnewton · 6 days ago
I'm working on Habitat. It's a free and open source, self-hosted platform for communities to discover and discuss their local area. The plan is for it to be federated.

- The idea: https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/location-based-social-net...

- A build update and plan: https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/building-habitat/

- The repository: https://github.com/carlnewton/habitat

- The project board: https://github.com/users/carlnewton/projects/2

carlnewton commented on Ask HN: Any experienced devs who use AI extensively in their work?    · Posted by u/atleastoptimal
carlnewton · 6 days ago
I couldn't quite tell from the wording of your question if you want to hear from developers who avoid the use of AI as well, so sorry if my comment here is unwelcome in the discussion.

I'm a senior web developer and help maintain hundreds of PHP repositories for work. I avoid the use of AI as best I can. When I do ask questions to an LLM, I feel that I'm partaking in a dirty habit that I should quit. I don't have anything for that installed on my machine/integrated in my IDE. I feel that using LLMs to understand and solve problems is unreliable, a barrier for my personal development, a threat to the future of the industry I work in, unfair to those who wrote the content it is trained on, and bad for the environment.

I also largely feel the same way about other AI products, such as image generation.

carlnewton commented on Ask HN: Do You Believe in Aliens?    · Posted by u/otherayden
carlnewton · 6 days ago
Intuitively it seems likely that alien life would exist elsewhere in the universe, but I tend to favour evidence over intuition, and I haven't read any compelling evidence. The Wow Signal might be the most interesting thing we've observed in that regard, but it's still not enough for me personally.
carlnewton commented on Out of curiosity: what kind of people use this "forum" (I mean Hacker News)?    · Posted by u/adinhitlore
carlnewton · 6 days ago
I'm a web developer in my late 30s. I've been working mostly with PHP for the past 8 years, but have been a web developer since 2009.
carlnewton commented on Ask HN: Ask HN: What bug made you laugh after hours of frustration?    · Posted by u/doppelgunner
carlnewton · 15 days ago
I was looking into a syntax error. It seemed to be taking issue with a line that looked fine to my eye. Copying and pasting the line resulted in the error, but manually typing it didn't. I started pasting fragments of the line about to find out what it took issue with and it was just a function name. Something like getResults. While I sat there scratching my head, I mindlessly tapped the left and right arrows on my keyboard over the characters and noticed that I'd have to press twice to get between two of the characters. This was my introduction to the zero-width space.
carlnewton commented on Ask HN: What are you working on? (July 2025)    · Posted by u/david927
carlnewton · a month ago
I'm still working on Habitat. It's a free and open source, self-hosted platform for communities to discover and discuss their local area. The plan is for it to be federated, but that's a while off yet.

- The idea: https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/location-based-social-net...

- A build update and plan: https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/building-habitat/

- The repository: https://github.com/carlnewton/habitat

- The project board: https://github.com/users/carlnewton/projects/2

carlnewton commented on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)    · Posted by u/david927
FreeTrade · 2 months ago
Not sure I understand your 'because' here. Blockchain is helpful in making data public and persistent, and not under control on any one individual.

You might also be interested in geohashing as a more user friendly way to group nearby posts, although lat/lon is easier for a cpu.

carlnewton · 2 months ago
Perhaps I'm not educated enough with blockchain to see how it can help with Habitat, but I'll investigate it, thanks. I'll also look into geohashing. I've never heard of it before, but I have been thinking about the issue of multiple posts for the same location and how to deal with that, so geohashing might certainly help with that. Thanks again.
carlnewton commented on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)    · Posted by u/david927
FreeTrade · 2 months ago
Nice idea.

I'd encourage you to embrace full decentralization via blockchain technology. Why? Any successful tech that empowers and connects local communities becomes very politically interesting very quickly.

carlnewton · 2 months ago
Thanks. Decentralisation is the aim. I don't think blockchain will be required though, because lat/long coordinates will act as a route directly between instances. I describe this here: https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/location-based-social-net...
carlnewton commented on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)    · Posted by u/david927
morgengold · 2 months ago
Love the idea!
carlnewton · 2 months ago
Thanks so much!

u/carlnewton

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