Hacker News Reader

felixdingon M 7.4 earthquake – 100 km ENE of Miyako, Japan

I live in Tokyo. Today's quake felt pretty strong (maybe because I was on the 14th floor) and lasted a while. Haven't felt one this big in months.

felixdingon A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”

This is great. Can Google also stop scroll hijacking?

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

https://aquablue.app - Simple, Reliable AI Automation

https://kintoun.ai - Translate Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents with layout and formatting intact.

https://ricatutor.com - Your AI Language Tutor for YouTube

felixdingon Palm OS User Interface Guidelines (2003) [pdf]

I can’t recommend another excellent free ebook enough: Zen of Palm.

It accurately describes the key differences between designing for desktop and mobile, which explains why PalmOS was so much easier to use than the various Windows-based mobile formats from Microsoft at the time. I even wrote a whole blog series about this book two decades ago (https://dingyu.me/blog/zen-of-palm-1).

I switched from a Dell Pocket PC to a Treo 650, and it was such a revelation. IMHO, this little phone is still one of the best in terms of simplicity, even today.

felixdingon TinyIce: Single-binary Icecast2-compatible server (auto-HTTPS, multi-tenant)

Very cool project!

When I was still working at a large corporation, I built an internal "social" radio station using Icecast2. I'd broadcast my favorite music like Pink Floyd and Radiohead to my coworkers via a simple Rails web app, and we'd chat about music, work, and everything in between on the same web app. That was a long time ago, and I no longer have that environment (a big company with lots of similar-minded young people), but live-streaming music with friends will always be a soft spot in my heart.

felixdingon 27-year-old Apple iBooks can connect to Wi-Fi and download official updates

The UI looks so good. Why can’t we have good looking things anymore?

I spent hours each month looking for a way to bring back Aqua on Mac or Linux through theming or alternative DE but nothing comes close to the real thing.

If one day I have enough money I’ll just start work on a new DE to faithfully recreate Aqua. One can dream.

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

Typo: "after transition" -> "after translation"

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

Two things for my document translator https://kintoun.ai :

1. Trying to improve the translation quality by giving LLM more context.

2. Fixing the issue where PowerPoint slides layout may become a bit messy after transition because of different text density between western and CJK languages.

felixdingon Qwen3-Max-Thinking

As a Chinese person, I smile every time I see this argument. Government-mandated censorship that violates freedom of speech is fundamentally different from content policies set by a private company exercising its own freedom of speech.

felixdingon Selling SaaS in Japan

I've been working in Japan as a product manager/engineer for a few years. The market is indeed quite different from other parts of the world. It's hard to build trust and get sales in Japan, but once you do, your customers tend to stick with you for a very long time (sometimes decades or even longer - not in IT of course). Simply localizing your app is far from enough. You'll need a sales team, preferably composed of Japanese people, based in Japan. And you'll need to be patient.

felixdingon Selling SaaS in Japan

Translation alone is simply not enough. You'll need local presence, Japanese sales people, and patience (a lot of them).

felixdingon Apple Creator Studio

The icons...so this is what the future looks like under Steve Lemay?!

felixdingon NeXTSTEP on Pa-RISC

100% this.

Let's hope projects like https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace succeed.

felixdingon Show HN: Vibe coding a bookshelf with Claude Code

Neat. I also used to make a simple "bookshelf" web page each year for the books I read, but mine were fully static HTML and nowhere near as fancy as this.

Side note: I once wrote about recreating Delicious Library: https://dingyu.me/blog/recreating-delicious-library-in-2025

felixdingon Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief

If only Apple could bring Scott Forstall back.

Oh one can dream...

felixdingon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)

Redesigning https://kintoun.ai/ , my document translator that keeps file formatting and layout (almost) intact.

felixdingon Apple Design VP Alan Dye Departing for Meta

Can we have Scott Forstall back please?

felixdingon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)

https://kintoun.ai

Document translator that keeps layout intact.

felixdingon StarGrid: A new Palm OS strategy game

Zen of Palm

Mobile app developers, if you haven't read Zen of Palm, I highly recommend this piece of art. You can download the PDF for free. Nothing beats Palm for its simplicity, responsiveness, and (perhaps subjectively) ease of use, even to this day.

I wrote a series of blog posts about it nearly two decades ago, and later translated some parts into English: https://dingyu.me/blog/zen-of-palm-1-preface

felixdingon Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)

https://kintoun.ai

A simple document translator that preserves your file's formatting and layout.

felixdingon Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2025)

https://kintoun.ai

Document (DOCX/PPTX/XLSX etc.) translator that preserves your file's layout.

felixdingon iPhone Air

The first thing I do after opening this page (or any other phone announcement) on Hacker News is press cmd+f and search for "headphone". Turns out not many people care about this anymore.

felixdingon Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

I can, and will, totally use this as my daily driver on my MBP 2013, if there is Tailscale and a up-to-date iTerm2.

The UI is soooo much better than the current Mac OS.

felixdingon Why I'm all-in on Zen Browser

Meanwhile, it’s not weird that people think what other people actually want are weird.

felixdingon Replacing tmux in my dev workflow

WezTerm

The author of this feature also ported it to the Windows Terminal.

Besides, Chrome OS’s built in terminal also has tmux integration.

felixdingon Ask HN: What are you working on? (July 2025)

https://kintoun.ai/

Translate docx/pptx/xlsx etc while keeping document layout and formatting.

felixdingon Modern Debian-based Window Maker distribution

@wmlive has already brought these up, but I think they're worth highlighting again: check out these projects if you're interested in NeXTSTEP-like desktop environments:

https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace https://github.com/onflapp/gs-desktop

felixdingon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

http://storedetect.com

The free Shopify directory (240k stores and 580m products at the moment).

felixdingon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

http://kintoun.ai

Document translator that keeps layout and formatting

felixdingon Ask HN: What are you working on? (April 2025)

https://kintoun.ai

A translation app that keeps document layout almost intact. It's also better than Google Translate and DeepL.