Lego violates GPL by keep Blender-based BrickLink Studio source closed (2021)
489 by app4soft | 106 comments on Hacker News.
489 by app4soft | 106 comments on Hacker News.
Thursday, March 16, 2023
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
New best story on Hacker News: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
532 by picklelo | 310 comments on Hacker News.
Hi! We’re Nikhil and Alek, founders of Pynecone ( https://pynecone.io ), an open source framework to build web apps in pure Python. This can be anything from a small data science/internal app to a large multi-page web app. Once your app is built, you can deploy your app with a single command to our hosting service (coming soon!), or self-host with your preferred provider. Our Github is: https://ift.tt/1dLtnfE Python is one of the most popular programming languages in the world. Webdev is one of the most popular applications of programming. So why can’t we make full-stack web apps using just Python? We worked in the AI/infra space and saw that even skilled engineers who wanted to make web apps but didn’t know traditional frontend tools like Javascript or React found it overwhelming and time consuming to learn. On the other hand, no code and low code solutions that save time in the development process lack the flexibility and robustness of traditional web development. These tools are great for prototyping, but they can be limiting as your app becomes more complex. We wanted to build a framework that is easy to get started with, yet flexible and powerful enough so you don’t outgrow it. Our main website is fully built with Pynecone and deployed on our hosting service. In Pynecone, the frontend compiles down to a React/NextJS app, so from the end-user’s perspective it looks like any other website. We have 60+ built-in components ranging from forms to graphing. Components are defined as Python functions. They can be nested within each other for flexible layouts, and you can use keyword args to style them with full CSS. We also provide a way to easily wrap any existing React component. Our goal is to leverage the existing webdev ecosystem and make it accessible to Python devs. The app state is just a class. State updates are functions in the class. And the UI is a reflection of the state. When the user opens the app, they are given a unique token and a new instance of the state. We store user state on the backend, and use Websockets to send events and state updates. When a user performs an action, such as clicking a button, an event is sent to the server with the client token and the function to handle the event. On the server side, we retrieve the user's state, execute the function to update the state, then send the updated state back to the frontend for rendering. Since Pynecone is 100% Python, you can easily integrate all your existing Python libraries into your app. In the future, we hope to leverage WebAssembly to offload many operations to the client. Once your app is built, the next big challenge is deploying it. We’re building a single-line deploy, so you can type pc deploy and get a URL of your live app in minutes. Since we specialize in hosting a single type of app, we aim to provide a zero configuration deployment process. We are still working on releasing the hosting service, but you can sign up for its waitlist on our homepage. Alternatively, you can choose to host your app with your preferred cloud provider. Things users have built with Pynecone so far include internal apps ranging from CRM to ML tools, UIs for LLM apps, landing pages, and personal websites. If you use Python, we would love to hear your thoughts and feedback in the comments!
532 by picklelo | 310 comments on Hacker News.
Hi! We’re Nikhil and Alek, founders of Pynecone ( https://pynecone.io ), an open source framework to build web apps in pure Python. This can be anything from a small data science/internal app to a large multi-page web app. Once your app is built, you can deploy your app with a single command to our hosting service (coming soon!), or self-host with your preferred provider. Our Github is: https://ift.tt/1dLtnfE Python is one of the most popular programming languages in the world. Webdev is one of the most popular applications of programming. So why can’t we make full-stack web apps using just Python? We worked in the AI/infra space and saw that even skilled engineers who wanted to make web apps but didn’t know traditional frontend tools like Javascript or React found it overwhelming and time consuming to learn. On the other hand, no code and low code solutions that save time in the development process lack the flexibility and robustness of traditional web development. These tools are great for prototyping, but they can be limiting as your app becomes more complex. We wanted to build a framework that is easy to get started with, yet flexible and powerful enough so you don’t outgrow it. Our main website is fully built with Pynecone and deployed on our hosting service. In Pynecone, the frontend compiles down to a React/NextJS app, so from the end-user’s perspective it looks like any other website. We have 60+ built-in components ranging from forms to graphing. Components are defined as Python functions. They can be nested within each other for flexible layouts, and you can use keyword args to style them with full CSS. We also provide a way to easily wrap any existing React component. Our goal is to leverage the existing webdev ecosystem and make it accessible to Python devs. The app state is just a class. State updates are functions in the class. And the UI is a reflection of the state. When the user opens the app, they are given a unique token and a new instance of the state. We store user state on the backend, and use Websockets to send events and state updates. When a user performs an action, such as clicking a button, an event is sent to the server with the client token and the function to handle the event. On the server side, we retrieve the user's state, execute the function to update the state, then send the updated state back to the frontend for rendering. Since Pynecone is 100% Python, you can easily integrate all your existing Python libraries into your app. In the future, we hope to leverage WebAssembly to offload many operations to the client. Once your app is built, the next big challenge is deploying it. We’re building a single-line deploy, so you can type pc deploy and get a URL of your live app in minutes. Since we specialize in hosting a single type of app, we aim to provide a zero configuration deployment process. We are still working on releasing the hosting service, but you can sign up for its waitlist on our homepage. Alternatively, you can choose to host your app with your preferred cloud provider. Things users have built with Pynecone so far include internal apps ranging from CRM to ML tools, UIs for LLM apps, landing pages, and personal websites. If you use Python, we would love to hear your thoughts and feedback in the comments!
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
Monday, March 13, 2023
New best story on Hacker News: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
582 by cmui | 537 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN! I’m Chris Mui, founder of Electric Air ( https://electricair.io ). We’re building a residential heat pump system. This will be an all-electric replacement for your home’s furnace and air conditioner that enables more centrally ducted installs, manages your indoor air quality, and saves you money on monthly energy bills. We also streamline purchase, finance and install by selling directly to homeowners. You can place a preorder today at https://electricair.io . Heat pumps work by using refrigerant and a compressor to move energy against a temperature gradient. If you put 1 kWh of energy into a heat pump, you get 3-5 kWh of heating in your home. But this isn’t breaking the laws of physics because heat pumps don’t make heat, they move it around. The extra 2-4kWh gets absorbed from the outdoors, even when it is cold outside. The low pressure refrigerant in the outdoor heat exchanger is colder than the outdoor air, so it has to absorb energy. After the compressor the refrigerant in the indoor heat exchanger is hotter than the indoor air, and energy flows into your home. This happens in a continuous cycle. A great feature in this system is a reversing valve that allows the flow of refrigerant to be flipped and your heat pump becomes an air conditioner. There’s a big push to end fossil fuel use in US homes by electrifying all end-uses, and heat pumps are a critical part of this. Space heating is 50% of the average homeowners energy consumption, and makes up 10% of overall US energy use. Recognizing the importance of heat pump adoption, the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act contains $4.3B in heat pump rebates for low and middle income families, and a $2000 tax credit that applies to everyone. Heat pumps can also save homeowners on their monthly utility bills vs. heating with natural gas, propane, fuel oil, and electric resistance. And thanks to the popularity of vapor injection systems, heat pumps now work well even in the cold climates of the Northeast. Quick technical aside on vapor injection systems - this is an improvement to the basic vapor compression cycle. Gas from the condenser outlet is injected halfway into the compression process. This increases the compressor efficiency, increases the mass flow rate of refrigerant through the compressor, and also lowers the discharge temperature. The result is higher system efficiency, higher heating capacity, and the ability to operate across large temperature gradients (say -15F outside temp to 72F in your home) without exceeding the discharge temperature limit and damaging the compressor. I’ve spent my career building and designing thermal systems—first in aerospace, then at Tesla working on Model 3 and Semi Truck, and most recently in vertical farming. I got really excited about residential heat pumps when I realized that we’re about to go through a huge transition where the 80M single family homes in the US replace their furnaces with heat pumps. But the products on the market today have a number of shortcomings. The homeowner experience sucks because the integration of thermostat, heat pump equipment and air quality systems is terrible. Nothing works together well, and the best thermostats are not fully compatible with inverter driven heat pumps. In addition the process of getting a heat pump is painful, including finding a trustworthy contractor, sorting out financing, and wading through rebates. And finally contractors struggle with installs because of the difficulty of properly sizing the system, and understanding if your duct work is compatible with a heat pump I wanted to approach home heating and cooling from a product design approach, improve the end-to-end experience for homeowners and make a product that was compelling beyond its climate motivations. Electric Air is building a thermostat as well as heat pump equipment (air handler and condenser) and a contractor web-app. Better air quality is achieved through a thermostat with PM2.5 and CO2 sensors, as well as an air quality module on the air handler that controls HEPA filtration, fresh air intake and modification of the home’s humidity. The thermostat algorithm combines demand-response with weather and time-of-use rate plans to reduce monthly utility bills through pre-cooling and pre-heating. Unlike a Nest or Ecobee, the thermostat will be able to run the heat pump in variable speed mode. A more powerful air handler blower and contractor software enables more ducted installs - no wall units required. The most common heating system in the US is a natural gas furnace connected to ductwork, with the hot air ultimately coming out of vents in each room. This heat pump is a great replacement for the furnace and air conditioner in these ducted systems. The same software used for ducts also helps contractors perform simple load disaggregation (turn a utility bill into a thermal load calculation) to properly size a heat pump system. In addition there’s actually some industrial design going into the outdoor condenser, meaning you don’t have to hide it in an alley. And finally homeowners can purchase this system online. We help with financing and rebates, and connect them with a contractor to do the actual install. How come no one’s doing this? Heat pump manufacturers are bad at making consumer products like thermostats and the thermostat manufacturers are IOT companies that don’t have the know-how to wade into heat pump equipment manufacture. For heat pump manufacturers, their end customer is largely HVAC contractors, and not homeowners. Also selling direct means disrupting their current distribution strategy which normally involves selling to regional distributors, and sometimes straight to contractors. Getting this right is a big systems integration problem that the current players are ill equipped to handle. While we don't have any physical prototypes at the moment, we have the industrial design and also largely understand how this will be built. The core technology risk is quite low, it's really about executing the scope well and also finding the right product that homeowners find compelling. I'm working on building traction via preorders ( https://electricair.io ), and will start building hardware once fundraising is complete, likely in the next few weeks. What issues have you had with your existing heat and cooling, and do you have any interesting stories around a heat pump install or use? I would love to hear your ideas, experiences, and feedback on any and all of the above!
582 by cmui | 537 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN! I’m Chris Mui, founder of Electric Air ( https://electricair.io ). We’re building a residential heat pump system. This will be an all-electric replacement for your home’s furnace and air conditioner that enables more centrally ducted installs, manages your indoor air quality, and saves you money on monthly energy bills. We also streamline purchase, finance and install by selling directly to homeowners. You can place a preorder today at https://electricair.io . Heat pumps work by using refrigerant and a compressor to move energy against a temperature gradient. If you put 1 kWh of energy into a heat pump, you get 3-5 kWh of heating in your home. But this isn’t breaking the laws of physics because heat pumps don’t make heat, they move it around. The extra 2-4kWh gets absorbed from the outdoors, even when it is cold outside. The low pressure refrigerant in the outdoor heat exchanger is colder than the outdoor air, so it has to absorb energy. After the compressor the refrigerant in the indoor heat exchanger is hotter than the indoor air, and energy flows into your home. This happens in a continuous cycle. A great feature in this system is a reversing valve that allows the flow of refrigerant to be flipped and your heat pump becomes an air conditioner. There’s a big push to end fossil fuel use in US homes by electrifying all end-uses, and heat pumps are a critical part of this. Space heating is 50% of the average homeowners energy consumption, and makes up 10% of overall US energy use. Recognizing the importance of heat pump adoption, the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act contains $4.3B in heat pump rebates for low and middle income families, and a $2000 tax credit that applies to everyone. Heat pumps can also save homeowners on their monthly utility bills vs. heating with natural gas, propane, fuel oil, and electric resistance. And thanks to the popularity of vapor injection systems, heat pumps now work well even in the cold climates of the Northeast. Quick technical aside on vapor injection systems - this is an improvement to the basic vapor compression cycle. Gas from the condenser outlet is injected halfway into the compression process. This increases the compressor efficiency, increases the mass flow rate of refrigerant through the compressor, and also lowers the discharge temperature. The result is higher system efficiency, higher heating capacity, and the ability to operate across large temperature gradients (say -15F outside temp to 72F in your home) without exceeding the discharge temperature limit and damaging the compressor. I’ve spent my career building and designing thermal systems—first in aerospace, then at Tesla working on Model 3 and Semi Truck, and most recently in vertical farming. I got really excited about residential heat pumps when I realized that we’re about to go through a huge transition where the 80M single family homes in the US replace their furnaces with heat pumps. But the products on the market today have a number of shortcomings. The homeowner experience sucks because the integration of thermostat, heat pump equipment and air quality systems is terrible. Nothing works together well, and the best thermostats are not fully compatible with inverter driven heat pumps. In addition the process of getting a heat pump is painful, including finding a trustworthy contractor, sorting out financing, and wading through rebates. And finally contractors struggle with installs because of the difficulty of properly sizing the system, and understanding if your duct work is compatible with a heat pump I wanted to approach home heating and cooling from a product design approach, improve the end-to-end experience for homeowners and make a product that was compelling beyond its climate motivations. Electric Air is building a thermostat as well as heat pump equipment (air handler and condenser) and a contractor web-app. Better air quality is achieved through a thermostat with PM2.5 and CO2 sensors, as well as an air quality module on the air handler that controls HEPA filtration, fresh air intake and modification of the home’s humidity. The thermostat algorithm combines demand-response with weather and time-of-use rate plans to reduce monthly utility bills through pre-cooling and pre-heating. Unlike a Nest or Ecobee, the thermostat will be able to run the heat pump in variable speed mode. A more powerful air handler blower and contractor software enables more ducted installs - no wall units required. The most common heating system in the US is a natural gas furnace connected to ductwork, with the hot air ultimately coming out of vents in each room. This heat pump is a great replacement for the furnace and air conditioner in these ducted systems. The same software used for ducts also helps contractors perform simple load disaggregation (turn a utility bill into a thermal load calculation) to properly size a heat pump system. In addition there’s actually some industrial design going into the outdoor condenser, meaning you don’t have to hide it in an alley. And finally homeowners can purchase this system online. We help with financing and rebates, and connect them with a contractor to do the actual install. How come no one’s doing this? Heat pump manufacturers are bad at making consumer products like thermostats and the thermostat manufacturers are IOT companies that don’t have the know-how to wade into heat pump equipment manufacture. For heat pump manufacturers, their end customer is largely HVAC contractors, and not homeowners. Also selling direct means disrupting their current distribution strategy which normally involves selling to regional distributors, and sometimes straight to contractors. Getting this right is a big systems integration problem that the current players are ill equipped to handle. While we don't have any physical prototypes at the moment, we have the industrial design and also largely understand how this will be built. The core technology risk is quite low, it's really about executing the scope well and also finding the right product that homeowners find compelling. I'm working on building traction via preorders ( https://electricair.io ), and will start building hardware once fundraising is complete, likely in the next few weeks. What issues have you had with your existing heat and cooling, and do you have any interesting stories around a heat pump install or use? I would love to hear your ideas, experiences, and feedback on any and all of the above!
