Dowe
Show HN: Dowe – A full-stack language for server, web, desktop, Android, and iOS
Rise-reforming
Hi HN! This is George, Lucas, and Jona from Rise Reforming (https://www.rise-reforming.com/). We’re developing a process to convert gas produced at landfills, farms, and wastewater plants (“biogas”) into higher value chemicals. Our technology is modular, designed to be deployed and operated on-site. Think of us as a chemical project developer; we sit between biogas producers (suppliers) and chemical end users (customers). We pay biogas producers for their gas and we make money from selling our chemicals. We're starting with dimethyl ether (DME) as our beachhead chemical because of its high-margin use case in the cosmetics industry and ultimately targeting methanol – a versatile and widely used industrial chemical. Being in a two sided market allows us to target two large problems. (1) On the chemical side: The multi-trillion dollar U.S. chemical and fuel industries are vulnerable to geopolitical conflicts and climate-driven natural disasters. The Iran war has caused global methanol prices to skyrocket – even in the U.S., a net exporter of methanol. (https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news... the US). In 2021, Winter Storm Uri wiped out 60% of U.S. organic chemicals production for at least a month (https://www.dallasfed.org/research/swe/2021/swe2102/swe2102c...). The problem? Centralized production and fossil-fuel dependence. The solution isn't unknown; decentralized, fossil-free production could insulate supply chains from these shocks. But distributed green chemical production has yet to become cost-competitive with the status quo. Unlocking it requires the right feedstock paired with the right process and strategy. Also, the chemical industry’s reliance on fossil fuels makes it responsible for 5-6% of global greenhouse gas emissions. About 40% of the industry’s well-to-gate emissions come from just the extraction, processing, and transportation of these fossil fuels (https://rmi.org/resources/chemistry-in-transition-charting-s...). (2) Biogas is an ideal feedstock to address Problem 1. It is decentralized, plentiful, and a large part of it is not properly utilized. Biogas is a mixture of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2), produced as a result of anaerobic digestion at landfills, farms, and wastewater plants, and can be used as a raw material in chemical manufacturing. The U.S. produces around 780 billion cubic feet of biogas a year – if we converted all that biogas into methanol, that’s about $20 billion a year. Currently, about 60% of this biogas is either burned for power/heat (low-margin and unreliable) or flared altogether. The rest is used in the highly subsidized renewable natural gas (RNG) market (https://americanbiogascouncil.org/abcs-data-digest-lite-july...). The result: many biogas producers leave substantial revenue on the table and experience huge operational headaches. Our modular technology takes in biogas, electricity, and water as inputs. Co-location with biogas producers allows us to tap into their existing infrastructure and speeds up permitting vs a greenfield project. Our 3 step process is outlined below: Step 1: We clean the biogas of contaminants. That means running the gas over specialized adsorbents that trap any nasty sulfur-containing and silicon-containing compounds we don’t want in our process. Step 2: We reform that biogas into an intermediate gas called syngas through the bi-reforming process, which combines the novel dry methane reforming reaction with the legacy steam methane reforming reaction. Syngas is a versatile combination of H2 and CO and is the building block for many chemicals, allowing us to be a platform company. Step 3: Lastly, we upgrade that syngas into our end chemicals. We do this step using conventional catalysts and operating conditions. The modular approach paired with our patent-pending integrated process makes our solution one of the cheapest ways of making green chemicals. Where are we today? We’ve completed our proof-of-concept in the lab and just broke ground on our pilot plant at a Chicagoland wastewater plant that currently flares all of its biogas. We will convert that wasted biogas into methanol. Estimated commissioning is Q1 2027. We all met at the University of Chicago studying Molecular Engineering and started the company back in June 2024. Rise Reforming’s first iteration came after attending a talk from an Argonne National Laboratory researcher on low-carbon fuels. In that seminar, we heard about a reaction called “dry reforming” wherein one can react CH4 with CO2, effectively eliminating both pollutants and making useful syngas (CO + H2). We realized that this reaction could enable cheaper decarbonization of chemicals than the legacy electrolysis pathway and started to build a technoeconomic analysis. George has a background in energy generation, storage, and carbon capture. He was an early employee at Highland Electric Fleets (now a unicorn) and later worked at Nexamp, GenH, and Mantel Capture – researching various battery chemistries, building a first-of-a-kind (FOAK) modular hydropower system, and helping prove a novel point-source capture prototype. He also conducted battery research at UChicago's Patel Lab and Rowan Group, co-authoring two papers. Lucas led the design, procurement, construction, and operation of Rise Reforming’s bench-scale reforming unit with controls that operated successfully for over 1800+ continuous hours. Prior to Rise, he worked at Avangrid (Iberdrola Group) with the offshore wind project services team and did transmutation research of spent nuclear fuel at Argonne National Laboratory. Jona also studied Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. He grew up around the marine industry and brings deep knowledge of the space to the team. While at UChicago, he conducted research in the Patel Lab on batteries and sustainable polymer applications and built novel equipment for the lab, including a high-throughput cyclic voltammetry battery performance testing device. Our advisory board has 220+ combined years in aerosols, permitting/safety, low-carbon fuels, catalysts, scale-up, automated modular chemical plants, and wastewater treatment. Here’s our launch video if you want to put faces to the names: https://youtu.be/Bx_ASPapxlQ?si=PAlqvd1eUhW8kjJm. We’d appreciate any feedback, questions, or advice. Thank you for reading! George, Lucas, and Jona
tale.fyi, we deserve a home for fiction
for decades, i have been concerned that the internet was being built around non-fiction, so i built something to show how we could celebrate great fiction on the web. i started with an amazing library from the public domain, and i also added tools to add your own stories super interested to hear any feedback, and if you read anything good!
Tines 3B
Hey HN! This is Yannick from Tines, really excited to share what we’re launching today. Tines 3B is a new product we’ve built for teams building agents, apps, and automations with AI, on top of the assumption that people are already doing this, whether or not IT or security knows about it. Finance, marketing, and more are building dashboards in Claude Code or Codex. None of it is malicious, people are doing exactly what they were asked to do. The issue is there's no easy way for that work to run securely: it ends up on a laptop or personal account, with a credential pasted directly into the code, with no one else able to see it exists. Tines 3B is where that work runs instead: everyone can still build the same way, but it executes in an environment that IT and security can actually see and control. It's code-first, describe what you want, your LLM writes the implementation, with isolated executions and credentials handled through a proxy rather than embedded in the code. Our other product has been running inside security and IT teams' most sensitive systems for the last 8 years. This is the same underlying problem (who gets access to what, and who can see it), just for a new category of builder. Our explorer edition is free forever, entirely self-serve: https://login.tines.com/saml_idp/signup
Flashpaper
Hi everyone! This is my first HN and I’m very new to the scene. My name is Min from Bangkok. At first, I just want to create a dead man's switch for personal use and for fun. then, I think about information that self destruct like a spy movie. after that, I try to come up with the better version of Privnote or Bitwarden with self-destruct and some kind of censoring or blocking download ability. Somehow, end up with this product. :O Flashpaper is for sending any information that would be burned after reading (with counting down timer like Mission Impossible movie ! or after 24 hrs max if not opened) Encryption happens in browser and because the key stays after # in the link; server never sees the key (Zero-knowledge for web use) and— because I’m a newbie. I don’t want to connect to database because I don’t have the money and I want things light and simple. So, that’s why Flashpaper keeps things in RAM-only, no database. For AI Agent side, Flashpaper provides a REST API and an MCP server so agents can create secret links easily in dead-drop style that can be claimed only once. The second claim would get a 404 which means someone already took it. However, for the agent API flow, the server sees the plaintext for a moment before encrypting, so this flow is not zero-knowledge like the web flow. Overall, I think it work quite well for web use, but for agent API use, I am not sure this is enough security. All the limitations are listed in SECURITY.md. Some feedback would be appreciated. I make it open source with MIT license, with honorware policy for Enterprise use, like self-hosted docker. Here is my repo https://github.com/mmmpym/flashpaper and you can try it here https://flashpaper.app Again ! Please feel free to tell me what I missed. Min
How many people live within an hour walk of you?
I've been building a bunch of US geography tools/games/visualizations and thought folks on HN might like this one. There are also drive-time and bike-time tools available on the same page. For folks interested, all of the data comes from OpenStreetMap and the US Census at the moment - OSM for routing and points interest and the US Census for population data. Anonymous users can use it 5x/day. I put up a waitlist page to gauge interest in a paid version but there's no way for the public to make an account - feel free to bypass the limits in an incognito tab. The site is US-only for the time being - sorry for international folks!
Vivari
Show HN: Vivari – Open-Source WebContainer for Node, Bun, and Python
Loop
Loop helps you close the loop on email introductions. It is added to the CC line (loop@getlooped.cc) on any intro email and after 2-3 weeks it will follow up with each side privately to determine the status or outcome of the connection, including any follow-on intros that were made from one side to the other. Other than actively adding Loop to CC, it is permissionless. It requires no account or external app - running entirely through regular email workflow. Over 90% of the time the same etiquette that sends the connector to BCC after the intro, will do so for Loop as well - so it only has visibility on the first two emails to determine who is the connector, who the sides are, what are their roles and when to emerge with the ask. Aside from the challenge of maximum datapoint extraction with minimal data at hand, it also had to be built with more than a dozen timing, attribution and meaning guardrails so it wont act irreversibly on inferred state. Some examples include out of office messages, personal assistants, weekends/holidays, intros of 3 or more people, replies from the same person with a different email address or emails that are actually not intros at all where it was CC'd by accident. I built loop because I do about ~20 intros per month and realized that I rarely hear back on how they are going (e.g. - if a deal is on the table) or what the outcome eventually was. This visibility makes me a better connector and dealmaker, and it puts me top of mind for attribution without me needing to do awkward reach outs. Loop can also be used for intros you receive, so I use it to see who keeps opening doors for me + gather statistics. Stack: Next.js 16 (App Router) + React 19 + TypeScript on Vercel, Postgres (Supabase) via Prisma, Auth.js for login, Resend for inbound + outbound email, and Claude Haiku classifying the incoming mail. Sentry + Vercel Cron as well.
Daily competitor-change briefs for local businesses
Show HN: Daily competitor-change briefs for local businesses
Beakdown
I used to play Joust with my little brother on the BBC Micro many moons ago and have fond memories of it. So when I was experimenting with Claude Opus 5 it was a nice inspiration for this game. Did a little research and found there aren't many games out there that just work in a browser without ads, loading screens or account sign-ups. So I've put this directly on the landing page with no noise in the way - it works on any browser on any device and loads instantly. If it doesn't work at all, please tell me. And also let me know if you think it needs music - I went without it to begin with but don't know if that's what people would prefer or not. Would also love to know how far you get, my personal best is 199,000. Thanks for your interest!
Manim (3Blue1Brown's animation engine) in the browser via WebGPU
Grant Sanderson (3Blue1Brown) created Manim, the Python library he uses to make the math animations in his videos. We reimplemented Manim with the same Python API, but the implementation underneath is Rust, connected to Python through PyO3. The Rust code uses wgpu, so rendering happens on the GPU. To run it in the browser, we compiled the Rust parts to WebAssembly so the PyO3 extension loads in Pyodide. In the browser, wgpu targets the WebGPU API, so animations render in real time on your GPU through the browser. The editor is Monaco (the editor that powers VS Code) with a live preview: write your Manim code on one side, watch the animation update on the other. There's also a built-in AI agent if you'd rather vibe-code your animations.
Learning Rust by writing a Markdown to HTML compiler
Hi HN, I'm new to Rust and, after half of `The Rust Programming Language` I decided to delve into a project I would actually use: a markdown to html compiler that actually serves my micro-blog (I started just right after publishing the project hehe). The project is intentionally small and one-file contained: I wanted to have the full picture in mind. I'm open to comments, suggestions and PRs. If you asked me more convincing arguments to "why did you do it?" rather than "to learn Rust" I would respond with: LLMs are effectively a new type of web users today and will be more and more present in the future. Having a full, well formatted, .md interface of a website can make it easier for them to access the content.