Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Show HN: Linex – A daily challenge: placing pieces on a board that fights back https://ift.tt/5jQhTcz

Show HN: Linex – A daily challenge: placing pieces on a board that fights back Hi HN, I wanted to share a web game I’ve been building in HTML, JavaScript, MySQL, and PHP called LINEX. It is primarily designed and optimized to be played in the mobile browser. The idea is simple: you have an 8x8 board where you must place pieces (Tetris-style and some custom shapes) to clear horizontal and vertical lines. Yes, someone might think this has already been done, but let me explain. You choose where to place the piece and how to rotate it. The core interaction consists of "drawing" the piece tap-by-tap on the grid, which provides a very satisfying tactile sense of control and requires a much more thoughtful strategy. To avoid the flat difficulty curve typical of games in this genre, I’ve implemented a couple of twists: 1. Progressive difficulty (The board fights back): As you progress and clear lines, permanently blocked cells randomly appear on the board. This forces you to constantly adapt your spatial vision. 2. Tools to defend yourself: To counter frustration, you have a very limited number of aids (skip the piece, choose another one, or use a special 1x1 piece). These resources increase slightly as the board fills up with blocked cells, forcing you to decide the exact right moment to use them. The game features a daily challenge driven by a date-based random seed (PRNG). Everyone gets exactly the same sequence of pieces and blockers. Furthermore, the base difficulty scales throughout the week: on Mondays you start with a clean board (0 initial blocked cells, although several will appear as the game progresses), and the difficulty ramps up until Sunday, where you start the game with 3 obstacles already in place. In addition to the global medal leaderboard, you can add other users to your profile to create a private leaderboard and compete head-to-head just with your friends. Time is also an important factor, as in the event of a tie in cleared lines, the player who completed them faster will rank higher on the leaderboard. I would love for you to check it out. I'm especially looking for honest feedback on the difficulty curve, the piece-placement interaction (UI/UX), or the balancing of obstacles/tools, although any other ideas, critiques, or suggestions are welcome. https://ift.tt/LPkDXhv Thanks! https://ift.tt/LPkDXhv February 25, 2026 at 03:33AM

Show HN: I ported Manim to TypeScript (run 3b1B math animations in the browser) https://ift.tt/yua30AI

Show HN: I ported Manim to TypeScript (run 3b1B math animations in the browser) Hi HN, I'm Narek. I built Manim-Web, a TypeScript/JavaScript port of 3Blue1Brown’s popular Manim math animation engine. The Problem: Like many here, I love Manim's visual style. But setting it up locally is notoriously painful - it requires Python, FFmpeg, Cairo, and a full LaTeX distribution. It creates a massive barrier to entry, especially for students or people who just want to quickly visualize a concept. The Solution: I wanted to make it zero-setup, so I ported the engine to TypeScript. Manim-Web runs entirely client-side in the browser. No Python, no servers, no install. It runs animations in real-time at 60fps. How it works underneath: - Rendering: Uses Canvas API / WebGL (via Three.js for 3D scenes). - LaTeX: Rendered and animated via MathJax/KaTeX (no LaTeX install needed!). - API: I kept the API almost identical to the Python version (e.g., scene.play(new Transform(square, circle))), meaning existing Manim knowledge transfers over directly. - Reactivity: Updaters and ValueTrackers follow the exact same reactive pattern as the Python original. Because it's web-native, the animations are now inherently interactive (objects can be draggable/clickable) and can be embedded directly into React/Vue apps, interactive textbooks, or blogs. I also included a py2ts converter to help migrate existing scripts. Live Demo: https://maloyan.github.io/manim-web/examples GitHub: https://ift.tt/TQPNv1t It's open-source (MIT). I'm still actively building out feature parity with the Python version, but core animations, geometry, plotting, and 3D orbiting are working great. I would love to hear your feedback, and I'll be hanging around to answer any technical questions about rendering math in the browser! https://ift.tt/TQPNv1t February 25, 2026 at 10:15PM

Tuesday, February 24, 2026

Show HN: Open-Weight Image-Video VAE (Better Reconstruction ≠ Better Generation) https://ift.tt/bFNOw8B

Show HN: Open-Weight Image-Video VAE (Better Reconstruction ≠ Better Generation) https://ift.tt/vJnzrSH February 24, 2026 at 10:59PM

Show HN: Chaos Monkey but for Audio Video Testing (WebRTC and UDP) https://ift.tt/1xiGIsj

Show HN: Chaos Monkey but for Audio Video Testing (WebRTC and UDP) It takes an input video and converts it into H.264/Opus RTP streams that you can blast at your video call systems (WebRTC, SFUs, etc.). It also injects network chaos like packet loss, jitter, and bitrate throttling to see how things break It scales from 1 to n participants, depending on the compute and memory of the host system Best part? It’s packaged with Nix, so it builds the same everywhere (Linux, macOS, ARM, x86). No dependency hell It supports both UDP (with a relay chain for Kubernetes) and WebRTC (with containerized TURN servers). Chaos spikes can be distributed evenly, randomly, or front/back-loaded for different test scenarios. To change this, just edit the values in a single config file https://ift.tt/MNteC4q February 23, 2026 at 12:53PM

Monday, February 23, 2026

Show HN: I vibe-coded a custom WebGPU engine for my MMO https://ift.tt/y48hEzM

Show HN: I vibe-coded a custom WebGPU engine for my MMO It took me about a week to vibe code this 3D game engine with Opus 4.6 that I intend to use as a replacement for Three.js and React Three Fiber in my browser MMORPG, Mana Blade. I was not expecting to be able to reach that point so easily, but pretty much every feature took somewhere between 30 minutes and 1 hour - 1 to 3 prompts on average. It is vibe-coded in the sense that I haven't looked at the code, but I am very careful with my prompts and constantly have Claude reviewing the codebase, looking for performance and code quality improvements. It can reach 2000 draw calls on recent integrated GPUs, such as modern phones or MacBooks, where Three.js usually starts dropping frames at 300-600 draw calls. I love Three.js, but I wanted to build something more minimal that does exactly what I need with better performance. I started with a C/WASM core but ended up sticking with JS because the performance difference wasn't significant enough for the number of entities in my game (never more than 500 entities). All in all, it was a fascinating experience, and I learned a lot about engines, even without typing a single line of code. It's pretty wild that we can now quite easily build in-house engines alongside our games as solo developers. https://ift.tt/ziIckJH February 23, 2026 at 10:30PM

Show HN: Unlock the best engineering knowledge in papers for your coding agent https://ift.tt/OgZXV5c

Show HN: Unlock the best engineering knowledge in papers for your coding agent https://ift.tt/gPlTa2c February 23, 2026 at 09:33PM

Sunday, February 22, 2026

Show HN: Mujoco React https://ift.tt/j3yftRb

Show HN: Mujoco React MuJoCo physics simulation in the browser using React. This is made possible by DeepMind's mujoco-wasm (mujoco-js), which compiles MuJoCo to WebAssembly. We wrap it with React Three Fiber so you can load any MuJoCo model, step physics, and write controllers as React components, all running client-side in the browser https://ift.tt/JOoVQl6 February 22, 2026 at 10:29PM