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Updated: 58 min 30 sec ago

I procrastinated so hard I built a proxy to stop myself from procrastinating

Sat, 07/18/2026 - 10:47am

Hello, fellow victims of their own attention span. Every time I try to learn something useful, my brain decides to launch a completely unrelated side quest. I’m not sure whether this is generational brain rot, my ADHD leveling up, or me simply being incredibly lazy.

The plan: review calculus for one hour. The outcome: spend three and a half hours learning how nuclear submarines make oxygen.

So, naturally, instead of developing discipline like a functional adult, I procrastinated by building an entire app to manage the problem for me.

It’s a customizable forward proxy where you create rules as nodes, connect them visually into policy flows, and group those flows into different modes: https://github.com/Vaccarini-Lorenzo/ProductivityProxy

I originally made it for myself, but work and other boring adult responsibilities have eaten most of my free time. Rather than letting the project quietly rot on my computer, I’m putting it out there in the hope that someone smarter—or simply less busy—might turn it into something genuinely good. Or maybe it’s already useful to someone. That would also be nice.

A couple of things worth knowing:

- It’s aimed at “power users.” Some nodes may require a bit of Python to define their behavior. Fortunately, we now live in a world where you can politely ask an LLM to write it for you. The project is documented, and I’m planning to add an AGENTS.md file and agent-friendly APIs. Eventually, you should be able to describe the flow you want in plain language and let your favorite LLM handle the policies.

- It runs on top of mitmproxy, so you’ll need that installed, including its certificates.

P.S. The UI is built with Tauri. Automatic proxy configuration currently works only on macOS, and I’ve only tested it on Apple Silicon. On other platforms, you can still use it, but you’ll need to configure your browser’s proxy settings manually. Proper cross-platform support remains firmly in TODO territory.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48958641

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Categories: Hacker News

What Makes Humans Stupid

Sat, 07/18/2026 - 10:30am
Categories: Hacker News

Show HN: Can You Name the Tune?

Sat, 07/18/2026 - 10:30am

I have added a fun feature to www.1000songs.co.uk called name that tune. https://1000songs.co.uk/#namethattune

It plays some radio static then pulls a tune from my 1000 songs, plays 5 seconds of the song then four options to guess. It has a "share streak" option as well.

Because my taste is fairly niche also have the option of pulling in different songs from the create collection option in the menu.

You can paste in any songs in the format year, artist, song to play the game!

Let me know what you think and feel free to comment with your best streak!

E.g. List below

E.g.

Year, Artist, Song 1956, Elvis Presley, Hound Dog

1964, The Beatles, I Want to Hold Your Hand

1971, Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven

1977, Bee Gees, Stayin' Alive

1983, Michael Jackson, Billie Jean

1984, Prince, Purple Rain

1991, Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit

1997, Celine Dion, My Heart Will Go On

2003, Outkast, Hey Ya!

2008, Beyoncé, Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)

2014, Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars, Uptown Funk

2019, Lil Nas X, Old Town Road

2020, The Weeknd, Blinding Lights

2022, Harry Styles, As It Was

2024, Sabrina Carpenter, Espresso

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48958496

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Categories: Hacker News

Show HN: Japan and Korea Parliament Members Archive

Sat, 07/18/2026 - 10:28am

Article URL: https://eastasiainsights.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48958474

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Categories: Hacker News

Aspirin Shortage in UK

Sat, 07/18/2026 - 10:27am
Categories: Hacker News

Show HN: Scaffold a raw idea into something ship-ready in under a minute

Sat, 07/18/2026 - 9:53am

Several months ago, I joined a WhatsApp community with around 500 people. Once a community becomes large enough, you start noticing certain patterns.

Whenever someone announced a new product idea, the responses were usually the same:

“That sounds amazing.”

“I would definitely use it.”

“Great idea.”

“Can’t wait to try it.”

I do not think people were intentionally being dishonest. Most were simply being kind. Nobody wants to be the person who discourages someone before they have even started.

But that is also the problem. Agreement is easier than challenge, and encouragement can easily be mistaken for validation.

The second moment happened at a local accelerator hub. I met a founder who had hired a developer to build an online education platform for her workplace-harassment awareness programme.

I asked whether she had used ChatGPT to pressure-test the idea before committing to development. She confidently told me that she had.

That conversation stayed with me.

Using an LLM is easy. Knowing what to ask it, which assumptions to challenge, and what important questions you have completely missed is much harder.

That gap between what you do not know you do not know, and the moment you finally recognise the gap and begin investigating it, is what I built IdeaGrit to address.

IdeaGrit helps founders pre-mortem an idea before committing significant time, money, and energy.

Rather than asking an LLM to evaluate an idea from a single open-ended prompt, the product guides it through category-specific validation workflows using nine predefined cards.

I think of it like a detective investigation.

Give a detective one clue, and the entire town may be a suspect. Give them two clues, and half the town may still be under suspicion. Give them several independent clues, and one explanation starts becoming much more likely than the others.

The same principle applies here. Each validation card provides another independent signal. By the time IdeaGrit produces its final assessment, the reasoning is based on multiple perspectives rather than one line of thought.

The goal is not to tell founders whether their idea is “good” or “bad.” It is to expose the assumptions, blind spots, and unanswered questions they should investigate before deciding what to build.

I would love feedback from the Hacker News community, especially on the validation workflow, the usefulness of the output, and where the reasoning still feels weak.

Here is the product https://ideagrit.foundersailab.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48958157

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Categories: Hacker News

Show HN: iMessage is the best interface, so I built TypeScript SDK for it

Sat, 07/18/2026 - 9:47am

I was building my personal agent, but I had to use Telegram, as it was the easiest platform to integrate. I wanted to build the harness and agent, not the infrastructure around these two, yet my UX was struggling. I stick to iMessage, and then I had to use another app to interact with my agent...

So I spent a weekend on building a TypeScript SDK, that unifies how to interact with different iMessage providers (as there is no official way to use iMessage), so you can play around with them, without having to commit to one, nor with a need to rewrite half of the codebase to change the integration.

It's open-source, you can check the repo here: https://imessage-sdk.dev/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48958119

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Categories: Hacker News

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