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

I don't know if you are being funny, but I say stuff like "arguments" because it has 452 of them, because I wanted to make almost everything configurable.

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

For the last couple of months I was working daily, and intensely, on Meltdown. The project started in 2024, but I retook it recently and improved/extended it a lot.

https://meltdown.merkoba.com

This is an AI Harness + Platform, made in Python and Tkinter.

It has a lot of advanced features, arguments, commands, shortcuts.

Lots of widgets and the markdown parser were done from scratch.

It has a powerful API to create conversational sessions interactively.

You can learn about it on a blog post I made:

https://github.com/madprops/blog/blob/main/docs/meltdown/mel...

madpropson _for-sale DNS records

Hah. Just now I was reading about how Sony hated Michael Jackson because he owned half of the music licenses, and some say Sony might be been involved in his demise. My point being, maybe Sony is not a nice company.

madpropson Python string literals are kinda funny

Great new way to write blog posts!

madpropson Taste Is All That's Left

I tend to like images in a split second, when they try to achieve a certain aesthetic at least. I can later inspect them more carefully and understand why they're good.

Reading text, it can either grab me or it doesn't. I've asked about that to an AI and there's some reason for that. Some text is more compatible with me, due to the rhythm or combination of chars/words used, how they actually look/feel, it's not just about the content. So I'm assuming some writers are going to be more compatible with me while others will make me dismiss them quickly or just skim.

I like to think I have the correct objective taste in music, but everybody thinks that about themselves.

madpropson Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

Just use both. vscode + copilot for autocomplete and antigravity for prompting. My main editor is vscode and I do heavy manual edits, and I also heavily use antigravity. I feel like I've become very productive and not actually renouncing the ways of the programmer, but augmenting them, as long as I'm careful enough with the generated code by checking every file it touched.

madpropson Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other

Some months ago I made this Morse Code Universe where people travel through zones, stumble upon each other, and communicate in morse code.

https://mall.merkoba.com/

All they can do is use morse code to communicate, even the names are assigned automatically. There is a zone map with hundreds of zones, zones with recent activity get a red hue. Secret zones can be unlocked if you happen to use one of the sekrit morse code words.

It's a casual mmorpg/townsquare that is fundamentally safe since the best you can do is focus to type a very offensive word in 20 seconds.

I stumbled upon some random people who visited the site as I was developing it. Taught some the words to enter the secret zones as a game, took them on a tour. Also met a morse code aficionado and we had a little conversation in morse code, eventually met him in another site I have.

madpropson U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6

AI is probably old italian tech

madpropson We all depend on open source. We will defend it together

Concerning globo-list. Centralization/takeover, aka an eventual "we will manage you"; which might be the true colors of the Linux Foundation. Forks would just get absorbed and used internally instead of depending on the performance of random informal earth citizens. The site is not even pleasant to read with that font. Villainy is parodied in this world heavily, names like Discord, Palantir, AI Companies talking about doom scenarios and enjoying it: so it's cool and expected to be a villain, to wrestle with the other kinds of power. I just want some fresh choices to polish the kind of company I want to get around me, which would likely be the opposite of who signed that letter.

madpropson Doing a masters while working in Spain

Felicidades. Sometimes I think about returning to a public university to have something structured to do, especially since I've been in a way educating myself through AI and I appreciate the idea of an environment dedicated to people with a similar intellectual interest. I don't really care about academia, if I do it it would be an experimental change of environment. If there is even a place for people like me in that public university at all (older people).

madpropson No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass

All you need is a gun and a car. AI psychosis if you don't have a heart.

Remember that Terrans are the most based race in StarCraft. Protoss got too stiff.

madpropson [dead]

Made entirely in Python, it has a lot of stuff and polish, custom widgets, very lightweight.

And recently I added an API so python scripts can be made to interface with the models and the interface.

https://meltdown.merkoba.com

madpropson Show HN: FablePool – pool money behind a prompt, and Fable builds it in public

I forgot to fully describe the prompt since I already described it a bit on the title of the submission, which might be a problem. I hope the title of the submission itself is included alongside the prompt when giving instructions to the AI.

madpropson LLM platform being built with Python and tkinter

https://harambe.merkoba.com/post/01ktmwj144

https://harambe.merkoba.com/post/01ktmzm0rn?priv=true

madpropson Show HN: Compare Similar Audio Tracks

https://youtu.be/1TUcLuEwP7Y

madpropson LLMs corrupt your documents when you delegate

Simple quick blind test for fun: https://w.merkoba.com/pickabot/

madpropson I’ve banned query strings

>Right click a youtube video from the results to copy the URL. I would have liked a short URL ready to share with people in chats, but no, I get: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFfLCuHSZ-U&pp=ygUNcmF0Ym95I...

>Want to share an amazon product on a chat to discuss about it. I would have liked a nice short url that I can copy, instead I get a monstrosity, it forces me to manually select only the id portion of it if I want to share it.

madpropson Ask HN: How many tabs do you have open in the browser(s) and why?

I'm currently optimizing my firefox tab manager (Grasshopper) to handle a user that has over 20k tabs.

madpropson Slide – Strudel Live Coding

Try the Auto Menu at the bottom to see some action.

madpropson Grasshopper: Advanced Tab Manager

Not a single line of the 66k lines were vibe coded except some specific focused fixes.

And don't tell me what to do nerd.

madpropson Grasshopper: Advanced Tab Manager

This is going to be an issue I see. I'm removing the Booster thing so that permission is not required at all now.

madpropson Grasshopper: Advanced Tab Manager

It's optional, you need to do something to enable the feature that uses it. I use it for a thing I called Booster which enables this permission so I can add some fixers for some sites like youtube, personal stuff, absolutely not required.

madpropson Show HN: I made a web game using emojis and no JS framework

What I find funny about this game is how exact the odds are

90% of the time you'll end up with 1 turn out of luck pretty much

I also made a flood implementation

Except it's not locked to one try per day

And clicking the items in the box triggers the action as well

https://flood.merkoba.com/

Peertube would work nicely for high traffic videos, since the data transfer can be shared among viewers https://joinpeertube.org/

madpropson Show HN: Minesweeper

Thank you. I made some improvements including your suggestions. For the field-on-first click procedure I just reserved some space around the clicked item when placing the mines and that seems to work, though the size of the fields can be different. I'm thinking of maybe implementing some grid generation algorithm where guessing is not not necessary. The minesweeper here is supposed to do just that: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/ "The first square you open is guaranteed to be safe, and (by default) you are guaranteed to be able to solve the whole grid by deduction rather than guesswork. (Deductions may require you to think about the total number of mines.)"

madpropson Draw an iceberg and see how it would float in water

I tried with a timeglass-like shape. It flew around the map, going in and out of view and eventually setting on/in the water https://i.imgur.com/kcT9elV.jpg

madpropson Show HN: Pluto – macOS system monitor app

Check bpytop

madpropson Git is too hard

Somebody should make a GUI application that the ONLY thing it does is undoing a push to a repo, or several pushes. That's a common scenario.

madpropson Show HN: Color Cube

https://www.dwitter.net

madpropson KDE Plasma 5.20

A nice solution is to simply put each icon/task of the same application side by side, so for instance you get 3 firefox icons in a row in the taskbar/dock, that's what I do, there's enough space anyway. That way you can quickly tell what's open and switch to them.