Show HN: Anos – a hand-written ~100KiB microkernel for x86-64 and RISC-V
7 by noone_youknow | 0 comments on Hacker News.
I pretty much always have a kernel project going on, and have been that way for decades. Over the past couple of years, that's been Anos, which has gotten further along than any of my previous hobby kernels, supporting IPC, multitasking, SMP (x86-64 only right now) and running on real hardware. LLMs (mostly Claude Code) have been used during development, but I learned early on that it's not _great_ at code at this level, so I've restricted its use to mostly documentation and tests. There's _a little_ AI code in the user space, but I have a strict "no AI code" rule in the kernel itself. I find this helps not only with the quality / functionality of the code, but also with learning - for example, even though I've written multiple kernels in the past, it wasn't until Anos that I _truly_ grokked pagetable management and what was possible with a good VMM interface, and if I'd outsourced that implementation to an LLM I probably wouldn't have learned any of that. In terms of approach, Anos avoids legacy platform features and outdated wiki / tutorial resources, and instead tries to implement as much as possible from manuals and datasheets, and it's definitely worked out well so far. There's no support for legacy platform features or peripherals, with all IO being memory mapped and MSI/MSI-X interrupts (no PIC), for example, which has helped keep the codebase focused and easy to work on. The kernel compiles to about 100KiB on x86-64, with enough features to be able to support multitasking and device drivers in user space. As a hobby project, progress ebbs and flows with pressures of my day job etc, and the main branch has been quiet for the last few months. I have however been working on a USB stack as time allows, and hopefully will soon have at least basic HID support to allow me to take the next step and make Anos interactive. I don't know how useful projects like Anos are any more, given we now live in the age of AI coding, but it's a fun learning experience and helps keep me technically grounded, and I'll carry on with it for as long as those things remain true.
Hack Nux
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New Show Hacker News story: Show HN: Kept for the children and machines that come after
Show HN: Kept for the children and machines that come after
2 by ainthusiast | 1 comments on Hacker News.
This is the first mention of Latent Diaries in public, right here at HN
2 by ainthusiast | 1 comments on Hacker News.
This is the first mention of Latent Diaries in public, right here at HN
New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How do you handle marketing as a solo technical founder?
Ask HN: How do you handle marketing as a solo technical founder?
3 by lazarkap | 1 comments on Hacker News.
I've shipped multiple products over the past few years. Every single one followed the same pattern: build, post, get 12 likes from friends, a bit of organic traction, then nothing. Back to coding a new thing. I know I need marketing help but giving equity to someone I met online feels like a huge risk. At the same time hiring a paid marketer when you have zero revenue feels just as scary. And I'm not dancing on TikTok, that's for sure. Have any of you actually taken on a marketing co-founder? What made you say yes to that person specifically? Was it their track record, the way they pitched, a trial period first?
3 by lazarkap | 1 comments on Hacker News.
I've shipped multiple products over the past few years. Every single one followed the same pattern: build, post, get 12 likes from friends, a bit of organic traction, then nothing. Back to coding a new thing. I know I need marketing help but giving equity to someone I met online feels like a huge risk. At the same time hiring a paid marketer when you have zero revenue feels just as scary. And I'm not dancing on TikTok, that's for sure. Have any of you actually taken on a marketing co-founder? What made you say yes to that person specifically? Was it their track record, the way they pitched, a trial period first?
New Show Hacker News story: Show HN: I built a tool to show how much ARR you lose to FX fees
Show HN: I built a tool to show how much ARR you lose to FX fees
2 by TaniaBell_PD | 1 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN, I started my career as a finance manager, transitioned into product management, and now I’m building my own products. Back in my finance days, while managing a £6M budget, I uncovered a £15k leak hiding in plain sight: FX fees. Today, I see solo founders making the exact same mistake. I realised most founders are quietly losing 2-5% of their revenue to what I call the Lazy Tax: - Stripe's ~2% auto-conversion fee on inbound revenue, - plus their local bank's ~3% spread when paying for global SaaS tools (AWS, Claude, Ads). So I built FixMyFX to show founders their exact leak and how to fix it (using multi-currency accounts to achieve a zero FX leak setup). Initially, I had Claude build this in React. Realised a simple calculator shouldn't need a 150kb payload and a complex build process. Threw the React code away and rebuilt it as a single lightweight HTML file using Alpine.js and Tailwind. It's completely free and ungated. I hope it helps you keep a bit more of your hard-earned revenue. Would love your feedback. Tania
2 by TaniaBell_PD | 1 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN, I started my career as a finance manager, transitioned into product management, and now I’m building my own products. Back in my finance days, while managing a £6M budget, I uncovered a £15k leak hiding in plain sight: FX fees. Today, I see solo founders making the exact same mistake. I realised most founders are quietly losing 2-5% of their revenue to what I call the Lazy Tax: - Stripe's ~2% auto-conversion fee on inbound revenue, - plus their local bank's ~3% spread when paying for global SaaS tools (AWS, Claude, Ads). So I built FixMyFX to show founders their exact leak and how to fix it (using multi-currency accounts to achieve a zero FX leak setup). Initially, I had Claude build this in React. Realised a simple calculator shouldn't need a 150kb payload and a complex build process. Threw the React code away and rebuilt it as a single lightweight HTML file using Alpine.js and Tailwind. It's completely free and ungated. I hope it helps you keep a bit more of your hard-earned revenue. Would love your feedback. Tania
New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Any Interesting Niche Hobbies?
Ask HN: Any Interesting Niche Hobbies?
4 by e-topy | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I'm looking for something novel and interesting, that isn't absolutely crowded that I could meaningfully contribute to. In 2022 I was toying around with OpenAI's RL Gym, right when the first non-instruct GPT3 model came out. I was thinking about getting into ML a lot more, but hesitated. Before that it was 3D printers, mechanical keyboards, drones, etc. All of these have exploded, and while they are still very interesting, I do love my Browns and manage Prusas for my local hackerspace, they have just, for the lack of a better term, industrialized. I'm also now in a position where I have time and money for it, not like when I was 15 and rating Ender motherboard upgrades I knew I'd never buy. Right now I'm making a chess engine, but that's already a solved problem. There's also biohacking, and while designing chips to go into my body is really interesting, I only have one, and don't want to push it too far. One promising idea is a kind of 'Personal Computer 2', where people try to innovate HCI, and while I really like that and do have some research ideas, I'd like to explore a bit more before delving deep into it.
4 by e-topy | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I'm looking for something novel and interesting, that isn't absolutely crowded that I could meaningfully contribute to. In 2022 I was toying around with OpenAI's RL Gym, right when the first non-instruct GPT3 model came out. I was thinking about getting into ML a lot more, but hesitated. Before that it was 3D printers, mechanical keyboards, drones, etc. All of these have exploded, and while they are still very interesting, I do love my Browns and manage Prusas for my local hackerspace, they have just, for the lack of a better term, industrialized. I'm also now in a position where I have time and money for it, not like when I was 15 and rating Ender motherboard upgrades I knew I'd never buy. Right now I'm making a chess engine, but that's already a solved problem. There's also biohacking, and while designing chips to go into my body is really interesting, I only have one, and don't want to push it too far. One promising idea is a kind of 'Personal Computer 2', where people try to innovate HCI, and while I really like that and do have some research ideas, I'd like to explore a bit more before delving deep into it.