long story short, exited my defencetech startup a few days ago. what to do next? well this crazy project started as an AI benchmark over a few beers celebrating the exit; and to never-ending awe it.... just works :)
just a fun hobby project to learn webrtc and p2p networking:
loads a real goldsrc .bsp map file (the same format half-life and cs 1.6 used), parses it in javascript, rebuilds the geometry for webgl with three.js, and runs a from-scratch reimplementation of valve's player movement so the surf feels right. multiplayer is peer to peer over webrtc with no game server.
it uses trystero, which does webrtc peer to peer and uses public relays only to introduce peers to each other, no game server in the middle. everyone in the same room name shares a session, broadcasts their position about 20 times a second, and you see each other surf.
AskUCP – UCP protocol explorer showing all products on Shopify (https://askucp.com/)
On January 11th, Google and Shopify announced the Universal Commerce Protocol (ucp.dev). It's an open standard that lets any application query products across e-commerce platforms without needing APIs, integrations, or middlemen.
AskUCP is one of the first applications built on it.
Right now, if you want to buy something online, you have to know which store sells it. You go to Amazon, or you go to a Shopify store, or you go to Etsy. Each one has its own search, its own interface, its own checkout. The experience is fragmented because the infrastructure is siloed.
UCP changes this at the protocol level. If products are described in a standard format, any application can discover them. You don't need permission from each platform. You don't need to build integrations. Anybody or any AI agent just querys the protocol.
AskUCP is designed to be a single pane of glass into online commerce. You search once, and you see products from across the ecosystem. Currently, that means the entire Shopify catalog. As more platforms adopt UCP, their products become explorable too. Eventually, it should be everything.
This is a proof of concept. It's early, and there are rough edges. Let me know what you think, refinements, ideas etc etc.
Hi HN, I built this because I got tired of fighting with Safaricom's Daraja API.
If you've ever tried to accept M-Pesa payments in East Africa, you know the pain: XML callbacks, rotating OAuth tokens, undocumented error codes, etc.
M-Pesa processes over $300B annually. It's how 50+ million people in Kenya pay for everything from groceries to rent. But integrating it into your app? That's a different story. Most developers spend weeks on what should take hours.
Micropay is essentially what Stripe did for credit cards, but for mobile money.
That's super cool, especially digging the openship UI! AskUCP started as an experiment as well. Let's see where the world takes us in terms of standards and open/closed/hybrid architectures.
Once we add UCP support to Openfront (our Shopify alternative), would just having a .well-known/ucp be enough to get support on AskUCP? Or would you have to implement some things on your end?
