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I built an in-browser voice assistant platform on Web Assembly using WebLLM + Whisper.cpp WASM + Silero VAD + VITS TTS

I've been experimenting with pushing local AI fully into the browser via Web Assembly and WebGPU, and finally have a semblance of a working platform here! It's still a bit of a PoC but hell, it works.

You can create assistants and specify: - Wake word - Language model - Voice

I published a little post on my site with some technical details as well if anyone is interested: https://shaneduffy.io/blog/i-built-a-voice-assistant-that-ru...

https://xenith.ai https://github.com/xenith-ai/xenith

I built this as a small side project because gifting ebooks always felt a bit impersonal to me. It often feels like you are just sending someone a file.

The app lets you upload a DRM-free EPUB, add a dedication page, and generates a personalized copy of the book. It modifies the EPUB structure directly by inserting a new XHTML file into the spine and navigation.

It does not add or bypass DRM in any way. It only works with DRM-free files.

Uploaded files are automatically deleted after processing.

It is intentionally minimal. I care about open formats and digital ownership, and I wanted something that treats the book itself as the gift.

Would really appreciate technical feedback, especially from people familiar with EPUB internals.

The article discusses the importance of pouring one's soul into creative pursuits, whether it's writing, painting, or any other form of art. It emphasizes the transformative power of genuine self-expression and how it can lead to personal growth and fulfillment.

smee.io is a tool that allows developers to receive webhook payloads on a local machine by forwarding them from the smee.io service. It provides a simple and secure way to test and debug applications that receive webhooks without requiring public URLs.

Google plans to update the Chrome browser every two weeks, reducing the previous six-week update cycle. This move aims to deliver new features and security improvements to users more quickly.

The article discusses the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Supreme Court petition to shut down unconstitutional geofence searches, which allow law enforcement to obtain location data on all mobile devices within a specific geographic area without a warrant.

This article explores the use of Nix, a functional package manager, in combination with Docker to create reproducible and reliable software environments. It highlights the advantages of using Nix for managing dependencies and building Docker images, leading to improved consistency and portability across different systems.

Hi HN, my cofounder and I have found success in the niche of Discord bots, and this is our latest one.

When I saw the Parakeet ASR model from NVIDIA, I realized there was an opportunity to operate a Discord bot at scale offering near-realtime transcription. So we built it! Let us know what you think.

Paired with a web UI for viewing transcripts, it's surprisingly fun to see summaries of our gaming sessions and of course it's been useful for meetings.

The article discusses the author's experience with a memory-management technique called memoization, which involves caching the results of expensive function calls to improve performance. It provides a detailed overview of the concept and its implementation in various programming languages.

The article discusses the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on policy and governance, highlighting the need for proactive policymaking to address the challenges and opportunities presented by advancing AI technologies.

I built mcptube because I spend a lot of time learning from Stanford and Berkeley lectures on YouTube, and I wanted a better way to interact with the content.

mcptube ingests YouTube videos (transcripts, metadata, frames) and exposes them through both a CLI and an MCP server. You can semantically search transcripts, extract frames at any moment, ask questions about videos, and generate illustrated reports.

It works with Claude Code, VS Code Copilot, Claude Desktop, and any MCP-compatible client. The MCP tools are passthrough — the connected LLM does the heavy lifting, zero API key needed on the server. The CLI also supports BYOK for more deterministic results.

Tech stack: FastMCP, yt-dlp, ChromaDB, LiteLLM, SQLite.

GitHub: https://github.com/0xchamin/mcptube PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/mcptube/

pipx install mcptube --python python3.12

The article explores the future of AI-powered tooling in software engineering, highlighting the potential for AI to automate various tasks, improve developer productivity, and enable new workflows by 2026. It discusses the impact of AI on code generation, testing, security, and collaborative development.

The article discusses Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under the Trump administration, who has proposed that TV networks should be required to air nationalistic content and pledge loyalty to America around the country's national holidays.

The article examines the potential of using satellite-derived soil moisture data to improve drought monitoring and prediction. It explores the integration of soil moisture data with other environmental variables to develop enhanced drought monitoring systems.

The article explores how the convenience of modern technology has led to a decline in self-reliance and personal responsibility, creating a 'tyranny of convenience' that undermines individual agency and the common good.

I built an end-to-end simulation of Congress with all 535 members "modeled".

I’ll share more detail soon, but here’s what surprised me.

In the first version, the agents were simple: voting records, public statements, committee assignments, donor data, and constituent polling. Then I let them vote.

Bills that have stalled for decades sailed through. Getting money out of elections passed with 95% approval. Banning insider trading for members of Congress hit 98%. Ending continuing resolutions cleared 95%.

Turns out, if you model lawmakers as mostly rational actors responding to inputs, they behave… rationally.

To make it realistic, I had to add self-preservation, incentives, and a strong sense of “the other side.”

Now those same bills die in committee. As expected.

Public bitcoin miners are shifting their focus to artificial intelligence (AI), signaling a potential end to the 'hodl' mentality and increased selling of BTC as they diversify their operations.

Hey HN,

I built yardstiq because I got tired of the copy-paste workflow for comparing LLM responses when developing apps. Every time I wanted to see how Claude vs GPT vs Gemini handled the same prompt, I'd open three tabs, paste the same thing, and try to eyeball the differences. It's 2026 and we have 40+ models worth considering — that doesn't scale.

yardstiq is a CLI tool that sends one prompt to multiple models simultaneously and streams the responses side-by-side in your terminal. It also tracks performance metrics (time to first token, tokens/sec, cost) and optionally runs an AI judge to score the outputs.

``` npx yardstiq "Explain quicksort in 3 sentences" -m claude-sonnet -m gpt-4o ```

What it does:

- Streams responses from multiple models in parallel, rendered in columns - Shows TTFT, throughput (tok/s), token counts, and cost per request - AI judge mode: have a model evaluate and score the responses - Export to JSON, Markdown, or self-contained HTML reports - Run YAML-defined benchmark suites across models with aggregate scoring - Works with Ollama for local model comparisons (zero API cost) - Supports 40+ models via direct provider keys or Vercel AI Gateway

I built this mostly for my own workflow — picking models for different tasks, testing prompt variations, and running quick benchmarks without setting up a whole evaluation framework. It's not trying to replace serious eval platforms, just make the "which model is better for X?" question answerable in 10 seconds.

MIT licensed, written in TypeScript: https://github.com/stanleycyang/yardstiq

Happy to answer questions about the architecture or benchmarking approach.

Krisp introduces a new feature called Accent Conversion for the Listener, which allows users to convert the speaker's accent to match their preferred accent during audio calls. This feature aims to enhance communication by reducing language barriers and improving mutual understanding.

The article explores the potential of a novel drug delivery system using a biodegradable and biocompatible material, chitosan, to improve the efficacy and safety of chemotherapeutic agents in the treatment of colorectal cancer. The findings suggest that this approach could enhance drug targeting and reduce systemic toxicity, offering a promising alternative for cancer therapy.

Hackers are exploiting leaked data from the Odido platform to conduct new types of scams on social media, such as impersonating Odido employees and attempting to steal personal information or money from unsuspecting victims.

BustAPI's original repository was recently locked due to a GitHub account flag. To keep the project accessible, we've set up this mirror.

What is it? BustAPI is a Python web framework built on a Rust (Actix-Web) core. It uses PyO3 to handle routing and JSON serialization in Rust, offering performance that rivals Go/Node while keeping Python’s syntax.

The Highlights:

    Speed: Reaches 100k+ RPS on Linux (multiprocessing).

    Syntax: Uses standard decorators like @app.get("/").

    Built-ins: Argon2, JWT, and CSRF protection included.

    Why it matters: It aims to eliminate the "Python tax" by moving the heavy lifting to a memory-safe Rust runtime.

The original project was gaining significant momentum before the lock. We are hosting the code here to ensure the community can continue testing and contributing while the author resolves the GitHub status.

Wolt, a Finnish food delivery company, has announced its decision to exit the Japanese market due to ongoing challenges and a shift in its global strategy. The company will cease operations in Japan by the end of March 2026, affecting its business and employees in the country.

The article examines the impact of tariffs on European wine imports, finding that the pass-through of tariffs to consumer prices is incomplete, with importers and retailers absorbing a significant portion of the tariff burden.