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Show HN: Kacet – a freelancer marketplace with crypto-native payments

2026-01-19 @ 11:00:31Points: 10Comments: 11

I’m a co-founder building kacet, a new freelancing platform that connects freelancers and employers, with crypto as the core payment rail.

The problem I’m trying to solve is pretty familiar: existing platforms take high fees, are slow to pay out, and don’t work well for international teams. kacet is an experiment in building a simpler, more neutral marketplace where payments are borderless by default.

Some highlights:

• Crypto-native payments – fast, borderless payouts without banks, delays, or surprise freezes • Peer-to-peer contracts – clients and freelancers work directly, the platform doesn’t own the relationship Built for teams – multi-user organisations for agencies and startups out of the box • Low, transparent fees – simple pricing with no boosts, ads, or hidden take rates • No dark patterns – a calm UI focused on agreeing work and getting paid, not maximising engagement

Payments are handled by Solana smart contracts, with a React frontend (TanStack Start). We’re keeping the feature set small to validate the core workflow: post work → agree terms → get paid.

This is still early and very much a work in progress. I’d really appreciate feedback from people who have hired freelancers, worked as one, or built marketplaces before.

Site: https://kacet.com

Happy to answer any questions or go into more detail on the payment model, trust mechanics, or why I think this approach might (or might not) work.

RISC-V is coming along quite speedily: Milk-V Titan Mini-ITX 8-core board

2026-01-19 @ 10:20:39Points: 14Comments: 4

Wikipedia: WikiProject AI Cleanup

2026-01-19 @ 10:09:38Points: 65Comments: 21

Greenpeace pilot brings heat pumps and solar to Ukrainian community

2026-01-19 @ 09:33:50Points: 15Comments: 10

Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees

2026-01-19 @ 08:23:04Points: 144Comments: 73

A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

2026-01-19 @ 07:14:19Points: 222Comments: 131

Show HN: AWS-doctor – A terminal-based AWS health check and cost optimizer in Go

2026-01-19 @ 04:35:05Points: 32Comments: 15

The Code-Only Agent

2026-01-19 @ 02:27:07Points: 88Comments: 37

Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back

2026-01-19 @ 00:50:20Points: 153Comments: 187

Fast forward to now. I'm a Buffett nerd — big believer in compound interest as a mental model for life. I run compound interest calculations constantly. Not because I need to, but because watching numbers grow over 30-40 years keeps me patient when markets get wild. It's basically meditation for long-term investors.

The problem? Every compound interest calculator online is terrible. Ugly interfaces, ads covering half the screen, can't customize compounding frequency properly, no year-by-year breakdowns. I've tried so many. They all suck.

When vibe coding started blowing up, something clicked. Maybe I could actually build the calculators I wanted? I don't have to be a "real developer" anymore — I just need to describe what I want clearly.

So I tried it.

Two weeks and ~$100(Opus 4.5 thinking model) in API costs later: I somehow have 60+ calculators. Started with compound interest, naturally. Then thought "well, while I'm here..." and added mortgage, loan amortization, savings goals, retirement projections. Then it spiraled — BMI calculator, timezone converter, regex tester. Oops.

The AI (I'm using Claude via Windsurf) handled the grunt work beautifully. I'd describe exactly what I wanted — "compound interest calculator with monthly/quarterly/yearly options, year-by-year breakdown table, recurring contribution support" — and it delivered. With validation, nice components, even tests.

What I realized: my years away from coding weren't wasted. I still understood architecture, I still knew what good UX looked like, I still had domain expertise (financial math). I just couldn't type it all out efficiently. AI filled that gap perfectly.

Vibe coding didn't make me a 10x engineer. But it gave me permission to build again. Ideas I've had for years suddenly feel achievable. That's honestly the bigger win for me.

Stack: Next.js, React, TailwindCSS, shadcn/ui, four languages (EN/DE/FR/JA). The AI picked most of this when I said "modern and clean."

Site's live at https://calquio.com . The compound interest calculator is still my favorite page — finally exactly what I wanted.

Curious if others have similar stories. Anyone else come back to building after stepping away?

High-speed train collision in Spain kills at least 39

2026-01-18 @ 23:54:43Points: 167Comments: 151

Show HN: Beats, a web-based drum machine

2026-01-18 @ 21:10:08Points: 99Comments: 29

I've been an avid fan of Pocket Operators by Teenage Engineering since I found out about them. I even own an EP-133 K.O. II today, which I love.

A couple of months ago, Reddit user andiam03 shared a Google Sheet with some drum patterns [1]. I thought it was a very cool way to share and understand beats.

During the weekend I coded a basic version of this app I am sharing today. I iterated over it in my free time, and yesterday I felt like I had a pretty good version to share with y'all.

It's not meant to be a sequencer but rather a way to experiment with beats and basic sounds, save them, and use them in your songs. It also has a sharing feature with a link.

It was built using Tone.js [2], Stimulus [3] and deployed in Render [4] as a static website. I used an LLM to read the Tone.js documentation and generate sounds, since I have no knowledge about sound production, and modified from there.

Anyway, hope you like it! I had a blast building it.

[0]: https://teenage.engineering

[1]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GMRWxEqcZGdBzJg52soe...

[2]: https://tonejs.github.io

[3]: https://stimulus.hotwired.dev

[4]: http://render.com

Texas police invested in phone-tracking software and won’t say how it’s used

2026-01-18 @ 21:05:14Points: 330Comments: 93

Show HN: Dock – Slack minus the bloat, tax, and 90-day memory loss

2026-01-18 @ 20:42:49Points: 143Comments: 131

Early stage – would love feedback from anyone who's felt the same pain.

Dead Internet Theory

2026-01-18 @ 20:19:07Points: 364Comments: 450

Flux 2 Klein pure C inference

2026-01-18 @ 18:01:58Points: 354Comments: 120

Gaussian Splatting – A$AP Rocky "Helicopter" music video

2026-01-18 @ 17:40:55Points: 650Comments: 210

Sins of the Children

2026-01-18 @ 17:08:58Points: 158Comments: 72

A Social Filesystem

2026-01-18 @ 08:18:36Points: 429Comments: 184

Simulating the Ladybug Clock Puzzle

2026-01-17 @ 20:19:46Points: 31Comments: 6

ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering

2026-01-17 @ 11:15:26Points: 1267Comments: 138

Provide agents with automated feedback

2026-01-17 @ 10:26:18Points: 138Comments: 67

Gladys West's vital contributions to GPS technology

2026-01-16 @ 20:21:50Points: 30Comments: 2

Fil-Qt: A Qt Base build with Fil-C experience

2026-01-16 @ 13:19:03Points: 114Comments: 64

Astrophotography visibility plotting and planning tool

2026-01-15 @ 19:33:32Points: 36Comments: 5

Self Sanitizing Door Handle

2026-01-15 @ 14:31:04Points: 18Comments: 24

Nepal's Mountainside Teahouses Elevate the Experience for Trekkers

2026-01-15 @ 02:47:16Points: 18Comments: 0

Gas Town Decoded

2026-01-14 @ 22:39:33Points: 147Comments: 127

Fluid Gears Rotate Without Teeth

2026-01-14 @ 14:39:00Points: 8Comments: 24

AVX-512: First Impressions on Performance and Programmability

2026-01-14 @ 00:43:36Points: 74Comments: 29

Using proxies to hide secrets from Claude Code

2026-01-13 @ 18:12:09Points: 90Comments: 32

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