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

infra engineering meanwhile trying to build some stuff for my own. also trying to finish cs master’s

Merge into one of the other copies:

(3 days ago /25p/56c) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50389501

(7 days ago /23p/77c) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50328340

I'm so fucking tired. I built this tool, it's great, I love it, but its full capabilities are too complex to udnerstand. Because of that I struggle with marketing, as everyone is too lazy to try it out. Because of that I get no feedback, nothing to improve, and I can't make the tool any simpler, as otherwise it defeats the magic behind it.

Another novel.

Currently, I'm in the midst of ricing my 3D printer - an Ender 3 V3 SE which has been sitting unloved for quite some time. Fresh filament, cleaning, mechanical tuneup, and now running through the very nice suite of calibration prints that are included in Orca slicer (which is new to me). It's been fun to get my hands around something physical.

Also been playing a bit of Blood Dungeon, which is pretty fun. I've also got a Factorio save that has mildly petered out after landing on Vulcanus (which I have kinda taken advantage of to break the addiction lol, but I'm sure I'll get back in there sometime over the winter).

I've been kinda deliberately taking a bit of a break from programming "side projects" after spending a humongous amount of free time and energy on a conference talk I gave a few weeks ago. It was titled "Human Creativity in the Age of AI" (which I later learned was an unfortunately generic title, lol), and I built this whole big musical and visual contraption that drove the presentation, including a "guitar solo generator" which recuts phrases of my own playing into a new solo on the fly.

It was a really rewarding project overall but definitely made me remember why I hadn't done public speaking for quite some time before - I am way too perfectionistic about it and it just becomes a massive time sink.

This one was worth it though, got a great reception and I'm really proud of the talk on the whole.

In the 2-3 weeks after the talk I spent a ton of time editing and laying out a really nice video of it, which I am also quite proud of. I didn't know anything about Davinci Resolve and I was able to get a really nice jump start with some help from Codex. I'm sure I don't know 98% of what a software package this big can do, but I did learn enough to be dangerous, and also enough to cut together some nice short clips of the talk as well.

It's been pretty rewarding to get a handle on a powerful bit of creativity kit like Resolve. It's incredibly capable and I'm really delighted with the results I was able to get. Obviously I am a rank amateur but to my untrained eye, my videos look pretty damn good. (And I could go on for another few paragraphs about how much work it took to get good results from the relatively shitty source video and audio I was working with).

I'm planning on doing some writeups because there was so much interesting tooling that came together as I worked on the talk and the videos, I could mine this one project for a year's worth of blog posts if I wanted to!

Anyway: links.

OrcaSlicer calibration guide - seriously great: https://www.orcaslicer.com/wiki/guides/calibration_guide

Blood Dungeon: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2431080/Blood_Dungeon/

I assume a link to Factorio is unnecessary here, ha.

My talk "landing page": https://epiccoleman.com/tripulator

Talk video: https://youtu.be/kD5qYiLIhJc

One of the shorts - the guitar solo part. I'm really stoked on the "presentation" bells and whistles in this video (though I think they're a bit mismatched to the regular intent of YouTube Shorts - analytics indicate that the intro part I slaved over is probably too long and people swipe away before the good stuff, but oh well).

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5AE5uMv8VEs

I've been working on online payment rails for businesses, developers and agents called Tuppence (https://tuppence.ai).

Accept online card payments from just 0.79% (UK) and earn 0.89% on all card spend [1], or get paid out to your bank.

I'm building tuppence to be available in the US, and 20 EU countries.

I'm getting a Point of Sale (POS) manufactured in the UK [2] for those who want to accept payments in person with card readers.

My goal is to help people sell their goods and make a living without paying over the odds for the privilege.

I charge a competitive fee for payment processing, give money back on card spend (with no cashback caps/limits) and do not charge saas fees or lock people into contracts.

Tuppences currently allows people to sell online with a store builder, expense management, payment links, direct debits & bookings - essentially Tuppence is a 'business' layer on top of what you get from the likes of Stripe, Adyen and Checkout.com. There's also have a 'connect' platform, so you can roll this out to your marketplace business.

Next on my roadmap is ticketing and 'treasury'. Treasury i'm personally excited about as you'll be able to earn 4% yield on your earnings, FDIC Insurance (FSCS in the UK), multi-currency banking in fiat balances such as USD, EUR, and GBP, or stablecoin balances like OUSD and USDC, and have bank account numbers to send or receive funds.

---

It's brand new, i'm still testing payment -> payout flows. These take a little time to verify on live payment rails.

Happy to give some fee-free payment processing for those who reach out and want to be early adopters, I can be reached at [email protected], or comment on thread.

---

Tech Stack TLDR:

* TypeScript monorepo covering the API, dashboard, docs, mobile app and SDKs. * The API runs on Ts.ED over Express with TypeORM and Postgres. * Background jobs use pg-boss, so the queue lives in Postgres and there’s no Redis or separate broker. * The dashboard, till and storefront are React + Vite + Tailwind, the docs and help centre are Astro, and the mobile app is React Native/Expo. We ship SDKs for Node, Python, iOS, Android, React Native and WordPress, plus an MCP server and agent tools. * Everything runs on Google Cloud Run and Cloud SQL.

References:

[1] Card issuing: https://tuppence.ai/cards [2] Point of sale: https://tuppence.ai/pos/ridge/

Commenting twice to show off something I have been working on.

what follows is the text of a poem I just wrote about a youtube short. It's artistic so if you're into that sort of thing you could read it. anyway I'll be posting it on my website later. I have a whole pipeline set up, it's pretty neat, I can show you that later if you want.

it's better to be able to do anything so you can be provided the tools and materials often, it's good to keep around spare parts of material only re-melting them when they no longer have a purpose none that you can creatively define space constraints, material constraints, tool constraints these are what limit you. uber-eats for machine assembly. Suddenly every suburban dad finds their calling. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/x4eXF-573jk CNC machine but on steroids, because there's more people who want to do stuff like this but don't because their specialty is something else or they don't have the tool/machine/willpower/reason - there's no reason but if they were paid whatever they wanted they could do whatever they wanted dollar inputs are spread dynamically based on what we have, and what we need. constraints. that we can all see and bend. like an MPC. Something I don't understand, but I do understand the implications of. Described, accurately and honestly, I know how to creatively apply. this, of course, is the destiny of all manufacturers - to be able to make whatever they want. "you need a joint structure in a shape? I can do that for you." "my rent is 1234$ per whenever. what does it really matter? we do the same thing."

--

insane software idea: function names should be indented, to provide a startplace for X direction rotation. Spinning and twining through the project. [see some of the formatting on my older programming works] most of which is unreleased and unheeded.

--

"you're jesus and everyone hates that", savior of the human race.

gods need to exist, so then it will all be okay.

if it's not okay, typically, you're dead.

in the modern day,

[dear disney world refugees - come work in Las Vegas or Portland]

[be beloved]

[culture of service]

in the modern day, life is all about lessons. at least for me. what do you need, you can learn from me. this is what I offer to ye.

"oh she said ye that means she's from the past"

nuh-uh

"yeah-huh"

no way you're bothering yourself

"... I didn't actually say that"

HA I got you switched to the off-the-shelf

"curses! look at me, I'm an evil witch now in another dimension!"

haha what a toast. cheerful, return to the fathers or something like that

"haha I got you back"

noooooo what was I saying

"not like I'd ever know."

heh true

"and so they were like bros"

---\ \ anyway that's my poem hope you liked it I might read it at an open mic tonight if I can muster up the courage.

quantum stuff

Mostly trying to think about what career to pivot to, since SWE wages are going to get crushed in the next 5-10 years.

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