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navalsaini

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2026) on Monday September 14, 2026 @05:04AM (#49693924)
Feedback or criticism.

There is a lot of delay in the responses from the company's end. Ideally, you should not post a test with so much delay in the responses OR follow it up promptly. It's not wise use of public resources.

Word spreads.

:-)

I love the chessboard design on the table top. I will love to do in schmess chessboards.
Can play it on browser now - https://schmess.com/demo
Correction - plays in the app (no signup)
Agreed-adding a wind-up delay would make gameplay significantly more strategic.

From an engine and state-space perspective, a "Dark Souls mode" creates a massive challenge.

Explosive Search Tree: Because moves overlap in time, evaluating positions via traditional brute-force depth/breadth search becomes nearly impossible. The state space expands exponentially (or infinitely, without cooldowns).

Strategy over Calculation: Because an AI or player can't brute-force every micro-timeline, win conditions rely far more on high-level positional control and timing anticipation rather than raw calculation.

Endgame Dynamics: Cooldown management would dominate the endgame. It could either make drawing much easier or completely alter fundamental checkmate patterns (like King + Rook vs. King).

Great concept to think through!

Show HN: Schmess – chess with no turns; pieces freeze on cooldown after moving

https://schmess.com/

Solo dev here. Schmess is chess with the turn structure removed. Both players move whenever they have a free slot, and every piece freezes on a cooldown after it moves. It's on a half board, with 100+ puzzle stages. If two people played this over a physical board they'd scrape each other's fingers raw - that's roughly the tempo.Plays in the browser, no signup. 29 stages free, one-time unlock...

( Read More... | 6 comments | 2 points | on HN )

Digital Ocean killed my droplets and gives a vague reply

Any idea what could be going on here?I had two droplets on DO, a server for game halfchess.com and a VPN that I use at work.I get this message from DigitalOcean Abuse. Could I have been targeted by an individual or is this something to do with a software loophole they discovered?----Hello there,Thank you for your response.We understand your concern and have reviewed this ticket extensively but...

( Read More... | 32 comments | 2 points | on HN )
Fuel can also be delivered at ones home or people can install their own fuel tanks that can last a few refills. Just a thought.
Thanks. I did not know about this one. Looks interesting and I will explore the website for details.
Re:Ask HN: Does anybody still use bookmarking services? on Sunday June 26, 2022 @04:48AM (#31882184)
I developed this over a weekend

rewq.app (after opening it once, you could swipe the name on the keyboard. The TAB key next to `q` triggers the auto-complete and completes rewq.app)

I use it making shortcuts to links or lists. Like, music -> ...music..link.. , so on.

When I swipe, rewq<TAB> ? music

The url opens. :-p

FYI ... Also comes with a chrome extension.

That's not true for everyone. I don't have an all happy or all sorrowful life. Same as I don't always make profits or always losses in market transactions.
Thanks for sharing this one.
Thanks for all the amazing responses. I will slowly go over them, use the suggestions and pick a book to read. TY~

Ask HN: How do I develop skills to comfort people and offer compassion?

I am looking for interesting "book recommendations" particularly.Someone told me that they were afraid to share their vulnerabilities with me because they feared I might not be comforting or even give them more anxiety.I have looked up to HN for wisdom over the years and hopefully this ask piques enough interest.

( Read More... | 87 comments | 104 points | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate? on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @03:25AM (#30175117)
I would appreciate your feedback on halfchess.com (though it has ads starting at later stages). You can find my email in about us section in the app or tweet to me @navalsaini .
Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2022) on Saturday January 15, 2022 @10:50PM (#29953088)
Thats well written - "value out of thin air and a little cloud"... took my attention.
Re:Tell HN: My Microstartups make $500/day while I'm sleeping on Wednesday January 05, 2022 @04:59AM (#29807147)
Hari, would you have advice on marketing my microstartup. I made an app halfchess.com TIA
Re:Instant Game Approval on Facebook on Wednesday March 24, 2021 @05:35AM (#26565145)
Just an update. This was solved.

I matched my address and removed some extra documents I was providing for approval. It probably needed an exact string match for the address (for which I had to add Flat No to prefix).

I had also in parallel contact Facebook on slack and reached out to someone in the gaming side of the company via a senior person in game arena.

Finally am happy that halfchess is live on Facebook, though the whole process took several months - including the company registration (that too a good 2-3 months and Facebook approval that took around 20 days). I got a bit tense because the I was wondering why facebook is rejecting the app even though I have GST number. The whole thing took 4-5 months.

Instant Game Approval on Facebook

I have made a game halfchess.I have been trying to get a facebook messenger approval for months and they keep rejecting my documents. The process is super unclear.Here is a link to my discussion - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h6neL87-kT6oYmcJkZuoGuEsUj7GqowmCOGMU-ywakg/edit?usp=sharing&gt;&gt; Back in Nov last year, I completed my development sprint (halfchess for facebook messenger)....

( Read More... | 1 comment | on HN )
Okay I made halfchess.com . I recently made an update to improve monetisation and next day day I saw I had purchases of $16 on google analytics. I was quite thrilled and thought its only going to go up from here. Until I checked google play console to realise that there had been no purchases. It was me who was testing some new payment buttons and generating fake purchase analytics events. My learning from the experience is, it feels great to see your app making a few dollars the first day it does so.
Re:On Browser Tabs on Saturday September 26, 2020 @01:04AM (#24596578)
About your pinned tabs. You could try making URL shortcuts with rewq.app . [ disclaimer: I made it for personal use ].

It would be nice to have feedback from others on improving it.

Thanks for your advice. I have been dog-fooding myself by using https://rewq.app and its pretty useful for me. Not sure if the appeal is universal though.

Ask HN: Should I make this tool to open long URLs from terminal with short name?

You can read a description herehttps://github.com/flipflopapp/rewq-cli/blob/master/README.mdTLDR:-$ rewq standup... would open a meetup-standup link... or just$ rewq... if its around 11-am, would open the standup link.$ rewq notebook... would open your jupyter notebook on GCP or show a list of URLs for all your notebooks.Add a comment or upvote if you need something like this.

( Read More... | 2 comments | on HN )
Re:(removed) on Saturday August 08, 2020 @05:22PM (#24095331)
Teaser (or for example),

$ rewq standup

... would open a meetup-standup link... or just

$ rewq

... if its around 11-am, would open the standup link.

$ rewq notebook

... would open your notebook or show a list of URLs for all your notebooks.

Add a comment or upvote if you need something like this.

Re:Ask HN: What projects are you working on now? on Monday March 23, 2020 @04:49AM (#22662202)
I was hacking a low code Volunteer management system.

https://github.com/crowd-tasking/awesome-crowdtasking

Feel free to check it out, its open source.

Re:Ask HN: What projects are you working on now? on Monday March 23, 2020 @04:16AM (#22662076)
Shall we connect on twitter - https://twitter.com/navalsaini

I am working on halfchess.com

Would love to take your feedback.

Re:Ask HN: What projects are you working on now? on Monday March 23, 2020 @04:15AM (#22662073)
Hi. I have made halfchess.com . Any chance we can connect (https://twitter.com/navalsaini) and exchange notes.

I have your app on my phone.

Cheers

Re:Ask HN: What projects are you working on now? on Monday March 23, 2020 @03:46AM (#22661968)
I am working on a low-code volunteer management system for crowd tasking volunteers. It will use Whatsapp, Google sheets, and Google forms for registering volunteers and notifying them about volunteer tasks.

https://github.com/crowd-tasking

I have a second personal project which also takes up some of my time. It is a chess game played on a smaller board (also has a blind mode).

https://halfchess.com

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