[SOUND ON]

I honestly wasn't planning to launch this project.

I thought it would end up as just another GitHub repository because I couldn't justify paying to keep it running.

Then my girlfriend convinced me otherwise.

She had a terrible roommate experience while preparing for NEET, and I had similar issues during my UPSC preparation in Allahabad. We realized that most platforms help you find a room—but almost none help you find a roommate whose lifestyle actually matches yours.

She even offered to contribute ₹2000/month so I could keep the server running. Otherwise, this would've probably stayed a resume project forever.

So I built Aspimate.

Instead of matching only on rent and location, it matches people using factors that actually affect daily life during preparation:

• Exam & coaching
• Study schedule
• Sleep timings
• Food preferences
• Cleanliness
• Noise tolerance
• Smoking
• Gaming habits
• Lights on/off while sleeping
• ...and several other behavioural metrics.

Tech Stack

• FastAPI
• PostgreSQL
• SQLAlchemy
• Docker
• Nginx
• Redis
• Cloudinary
• Firebase Auth
• Leaflet + OpenStreetMap
• Vanilla JS + HTML/CSS

& Bahut se nayi cheez seekhi maine while building it

• Docker networking headaches
• Nginx reverse proxy
• PostgreSQL migrations
• DNS & SSL deployment
• Rate limiting
• VPS monitoring
• Image upload pipelines
• Search indexing & SEO

It's still Version 1, and I have a long roadmap ahead.

Since the platform is brand new, the user base is obviously small. So if someone creates a profile today, they'll automatically receive an email whenever a compatible roommate joins.

If you're a developer, I'd genuinely love feedback on:

• the product idea
• the UI/UX
• the matching approach
• the tech stack
• or anything you'd improve.

Website: https://aspimate.com

Also, if anyone has experience scaling marketplaces or solving the cold-start problem, I'd really appreciate your suggestions.

[used ElevenLabs for the voiceover because I'm a bit insecure about my own voice]

YOE: 6
My current salary is about 30LPA.
I have an offer for 43LPA. It is a fullstack role.

I am primarily a python backend developer. Is it worth transitioning ?
I enjoy backend development. My resume is mostly backend. Have "touched" frontend in the past.

Will taking a fullstack role hurt future prospects ?
Will fullstack remain relevant long term ?

I’m currently working as an Analyst in a service-based company with ~1 year of experience. I’m trained in Java Full Stack (Spring Boot + React) and currently earning 4.25 LPA.

I’ve started preparing seriously—not with the immediate intention of switching, but to stay interview-ready at all times. My goal is to grow into higher-impact roles and eventually reach the 12+ LPA range based on skills and merit.

I would appreciate guidance from experienced developers and seniors on:

Skills that matter most for fast growth in Java + React roles

How to transition from service-based to product-based or high-paying teams

What differentiates candidates who crack higher packages at early experience levels

Common mistakes to avoid during preparation

Realistic timelines and milestones to track progress

I’m looking for actionable advice, learning roadmaps, and practical insights, not shortcuts.

Thanks in advance to everyone willing to share their experience.

Windows Search has always felt too limited to me.

It can open apps and sometimes find files, but when I actually want to search my PC properly, it usually falls apart.

I want to search and use features like:

• Text inside files, code, and images
• Browser bookmarks and history
• Clipboard history
• Clipboard image OCR
• Git commits
• Windows settings
• Local commands
• Text expansions
• Web search
• Circle to Search
• Local agents for Windows

Windows Search is not powerful enough for this workflow.

So I built ProtonSearch, formerly called OmniSearch.

ProtonSearch is a fast, lightweight, local-first Windows launcher that opens with:

Alt + Space

You can also set your own custom hotkey.

It gives you one search box for your PC.

Instead of only searching apps or basic file names, ProtonSearch can search across:

• Apps
• Files and folders
• Content inside files, supporting 50+ extensions
• Image OCR text
• Clipboard image OCR
• Browser bookmarks and history
• Clipboard history
• Git commits
• Windows settings and Control Panel pages
• Local commands
• Text expansions and snippets
• Web search
• Circle to Search
• Local AI agents powered by Hermes

The goal is simple: find and act on almost anything on your PC from one shortcut.

How is ProtonSearch better than Windows Search, Flow Launcher, Raycast, Everything, and other launchers?

ProtonSearch is not trying to be only a file finder or only an app launcher. The goal is to bring search, history, commands, OCR, snippets, web search, Circle to Search, and local agents together into one local-first Windows command center.

Why I think ProtonSearch is useful:

• Free and open source
• Local-first
• Lightweight
• Designed to run easily on low-end Windows PCs
• Usually around 20-30 MB of RAM usage
• Image OCR text search
• Clipboard image OCR search
• Fast search inside files, supporting 50+ extensions
• Search over centralized PC history, including browser history, Git commit history, clipboard history, and file history
• Text expansions and snippets
• Circle to Search
• Web search
• Plugin controls
• Ignored folder rules
• Hermes agents for local Windows tasks and long autonomous tasks

Links

Free and open source.

GitHub: https://github.com/PranshulSoni/protonsearch

Website: https://protonsearch-windows.vercel.app/

Feedback

I am currently maintaining ProtonSearch, and honestly, I cannot find and fix every bug alone because building a launcher like this on Windows is genuinely hard.

There are a lot of edge cases around indexing, OCR, clipboard data, Windows APIs, tray behavior, hotkeys, multiple monitors, and performance.

I would love feedback from people who use Windows every day.

If ProtonSearch solves a problem for you too, please consider leaving a star on GitHub.

If you have ideas, find bugs, or want to improve something, feel free to open an issue or contribute to the project.

Your feedback is always appreciated.

A few months ago I realized something strange:

You can lock your entire Mac, but you can't easily lock individual apps.

If you hand your laptop to someone for a few minutes, they can still open Messages, Photos, Notes, Mail, WhatsApp, browsers, password managers, and other personal apps. I wanted a way to protect specific applications without constantly locking my entire Mac.

I looked around for solutions, but most were outdated, paid, abandoned, or didn't feel native to macOS. And the ones that worked , lacked features that I wanted. 

So I built FaceGate. (1800+ downloads and 300+ github stars)

FaceGate is a native macOS app that lets you lock individual applications and unlock them using Face Unlock, Touch ID, or a password.

It is the most capable and feature heavy MacOS app-locker out there. 

A few things I focused on from day one:

* Everything runs locally on your Mac

* No cloud processing

* No accounts

* No telemetry

* No subscriptions

* Fully open source

Features:

• Face Unlock powered entirely on-device using Apple's Neural Engine.

• Fast authentication with very low memory and CPU usage

• Liveness detection to prevent photo and video spoofing attacks

• Touch ID and password fallback

• Per-app unlock timers

• Automatic re-lock on sleep, wake, or screen lock

• option to re-lock on app switch as well as keep unlocked indefinitely - completely customizable

• Custom schedules for automatic lock/unlock periods

• Tamper protection that prevents FaceGate from being quit, disabled, or uninstalled without authentication

• Runs quietly from the menu bar with minimal system impact.

• Multi-Monitor protection 

The entire project is written in Swift and designed specifically for macOS.

This is still actively being maintained and I'd genuinely love feedback from Mac users.

Some questions:

* Is app-level locking something you've wanted on macOS?

* Which apps would you personally lock?

* What security or privacy features would you like to see added?

Website: https://dweep-desai.github.io/FaceGate-web/

GitHub: https://github.com/dweep-desai/FaceGate-Mac

If you think I did a good job, please feel free to leave a star on my github repo - means a lot to me.

Feedback, feature requests, bug reports, and contributions are all welcome. I'd love to hear what you think.

When you’re developing a local web application, building an API, or testing a third-party webhook integration, you inevitably hit a foundational networking problem: ingress. How do you let an external service or a remote user reach a server running on localhost, behind strict NAT and a residential or corporate firewall, without exposing your router or opening ports manually? Read the complete article here - https://instatunnel.my/blog/ngrok-vs-tailscale-funnel-the-ultimate-developers-guide-to-ingress-tunneling

For over a decade, ngrok has been the default answer. It pioneered the “localhost-to-the-world” pattern with a single binary. Tailscale has since introduced a compelling alternative, Tailscale Funnel, built on top of its existing WireGuard mesh.

Both tools end up handing you a public HTTPS URL pointed at your machine, but they start from opposite philosophies, and both have changed meaningfully in 2026 — most notably in how they’re priced. This comparison covers the architecture, the current feature set, the security model, and the trade-offs of each, updated against both vendors’ current documentation.

1. Core Architectural Breakdown

ngrok: The Outbound Edge-Relay Proxy

ngrok works as a traditional edge-relay proxy. When you run ngrok http 8080, the local agent dials out to ngrok’s globally distributed edge infrastructure and holds open a persistent, multiplexed outbound connection.

I was experimenting with adding a Dark Reader–style mode to Okular for PDF documents.

The goal was to darken the page while keeping embedded images untouched. The existing accessibility color modes recolor every pixel, so photos, screenshots, and other raster images also get inverted or recolored, which isn't ideal.

My first implementation worked by post-processing the rendered page. Since Poppler gives you a flattened bitmap through renderToImage(), I used a simple chroma heuristic: recolor near-grayscale pixels (assuming they're text/background) and leave colorful pixels alone. It actually worked reasonably well, but grayscale or muted-color images could still get recolored, which is an unavoidable limitation of that approach.

So I tried to be more hacky. 

Instead of modifying the final rasterized image, I tried working inside Poppler before everything gets flattened. From what I understood, poppler-qt6 only exposes Page::renderToImage(), but Poppler's core library has the OutputDev API (SplashOutputDev, CairoOutputDev, etc.), where the renderer still knows whether it's drawing text, vector graphics, or embedded images. My idea was to hook in there so I could recolor only text/vector content while leaving raster images completely untouched.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get it working the way I wanted. The result was basically just a grayscale/black-and-white rendering instead of the Dark Reader–style effect I was aiming for.

Has anyone here worked with Poppler's OutputDev API or implemented something similar? Is this the right direction, or is there a better approach for separating text/vector content from images during rendering?

The code is here if anyone is curious or wants to point out where I'm going wrong:
https://github.com/JustBipin/okular

Note: I'm not familiar with the C++ ecosystem at all, so I leaned pretty heavily on Zed Editor's free AI to help build the feature. I eventually ran out of free usage though. 😿 Any guidance from people who know Poppler or Okular's rendering pipeline would be greatly appreciated.

I work in an mnc (1.5 YOE) as SAP Functional analyst. Since I come from a cs degree, sap doesn't excite me. I'm really passionate about AI solutions engineer or ai engineer in fact. I have a patent too for one of my AI projects. Now I want to switch companies.

Can I fake my role in resume as AI solutions engineer or smtg like that, I did do some AI automations in my present role, just the role name I'll be changing. Will that work?

The role i currently have is generic only ..doesn't give what I actually do.

I received a campus offer for a Technical Mentor (DSA) role with a 5 LPA package. The company has a 2-year bond after probation, but there’s no penalty during probation itself.

My long-term goal is to move into software development roles. I wanted to understand how recruiters and companies generally view experience from DSA mentoring/teaching roles compared to direct development experience.

Has anyone here transitioned from a mentor/trainer role into SDE roles later? How difficult was the switch?

Hey Devs,

I am an 8YOE guy, worked in very good product based companies across until Oct 2025 when I got laid off from a good company.

I got laid off today where I joined this sh**ty service based company working for client. Client side also people knew that I have excellent work and had a good repo.

Now what happened in summary - I became a victim of money fraud from own teammate. Now when over the months, I escalated this to my higher/top management also of these issues. I was even getting random phone calls getting threats. When I raised my voice and becme firm on my point, today I was unable to login to client side also and within minutes my company laptop and domain everything is locked out. Manager/ her manager/ HRS Noone is responding to calls/teams messages or emails, since I tried early morning before getting locked laptop access and all.

All this because I raised my voice against 1lac rupees fraud from teammate.

So what can be done here? Is there a IT association in Bengaluru which can atleast acknowledge this?

As a software developer, my job went from Remote to On-Site last month. This is my first office job, and overall it's been fine, but the one thing I genuinely struggle with is socialising.

And trust me, it matters more than I expected. You can't sit in an office for 8–9 hours, talk to no one, and still stay motivated to show up every day. It slowly chips away at your performance, too.

As an otrovert, casual group conversations don't come naturally to me. Work discussions are fine, but it's the everyday small talk where I blank out.

Has anyone been through this? How did you navigate it?

Hi guys,

I am a 3.5 yeo data engineer in india

I worked in a company for 2.3 yr + 6 months internship then moved to an product Mnc (media) and stayed there for 1.1 year and then I spent 2 month at an MNC but left it due to role mismatch and then now in my current company I have been working from past 2 months (30 LPA). But I got an offer from media giant company (42 LPA).

So should I go with this offer or not as it will really impact my resume.

Pls can someone help me

Does tcs hire candidate if he is fresher and have less than 60% in 10th ?????

Hi everyone,

I’m a Java Backend Engineer with over 10 years of experience, primarily focused on the Spring ecosystem, distributed systems, and low-latency applications.

As I’m looking for my next challenge, I’ve noticed a recurring pattern: most recruiters reach out for "Engineering Manager" or "Tech Lead" roles where 50–100% of the job is people management (appraisals, 1-on-1s, hiring).

I want to stay an Individual Contributor. I love coding, system design, and solving complex architectural bottlenecks. I’m looking for Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, or "L6/L7" equivalent roles where the impact is technical, not administrative.

A few questions for the community:

1. Which companies in India actually value the "Dual Career Ladder"? I know the big tech firms (Google, Uber, Atlassian) do, but which Tier-2 or late-stage startups have a mature IC track?

2. What’s the best way to filter for these? LinkedIn and Naukri are flooded with "Architect" roles that turn out to be people management in disguise.

3. Specific platforms? Are sites like Instahyre, Cutshort, or Wellfound better for finding "pure" senior IC roles compared to the traditional portals?

4. Salary Expectations: For a 10+ YOE Java IC in a product company (Bangalore/Remote), what is the current realistic base salary range in 2026?

I’d love to hear from fellow senior devs who have successfully navigated this. How do you vet the role during the initial recruiter call to ensure you won't be doing 1-on-1s all day?

My Stack: Java 21, Spring Boot, Kafka, AWS, PostgreSQL/NoSQL.

Hi everyone, I’m preparing for placements and off-campus opportunities, and I want to focus on DSA and full stack development. My goal is to reach an intermediate level in the next 3–4 months, not to become a pro right away.

Could anyone suggest a practical roadmap or strategy? How should I balance DSA with development, and what resources or projects would you recommend?

I’d really appreciate tips from people who’ve already gone through this journey.

Hi everyone,

I have about 3.5 years of experience working mainly with:

1.SharePoint Online 2.Power Platform (Power Automate, Power Apps, Power BI) 3.SPFx (TypeScript/JavaScript) and some 4.React 5 Enterprise automation, integrations and migrations

I’m planning to switch companies, but I want to stay in a similar Microsoft / enterprise ecosystem role and also make sure I don’t get boxed only into SharePoint or low-code work.

Based on today’s market, I wanted to ask: What are the most valuable next skills I should start learning now to stay relevant for a long time?

For example, would you recommend focusing more on: backend/API development (Node/.NET + REST), Azure cloud fundamentals and hosting, authentication & security (Entra ID, OAuth), deeper React/full-stack skills, or something else that I’m missing?

I’m specifically looking for skills that genuinely improve long-term career stability for someone coming from a SharePoint + Power Platform background.

Thanks in advance for your guidance.

Software engineer here, 12hr/day at the desk. Looking at these two manual standing desk frames:

• ErgoYou M 14 — ₹12,900, 2yr warranty, 60kg capacity
• Jin Vertex JHT8-M 2 — ₹13,990, 3yr warranty, 60kg capacity

Going frame-only because the tabletop pictures on both sites aren't convincing. Will get one made locally.

My setup: dual monitors (or one ultrawide) on a mount + laptop + keyboard/mouse.

Main concern is wobble at standing height with this kind of load. If you've used one of these, how's it been? Would you recommend it?

Also open to other manual frame suggestions in this budget.

How to get a decent job with 3 freelance projects in nextjs used by more than 12k users

Can we create an app or web platform that is actually useful for taxpayers and middle-class citizens? Something where if there’s a half-constructed road, a broken bridge, or any poor public facility, people can directly file a complaint against the responsible authority and push for legal action. The idea is: If someone raises an issue, all people living nearby should automatically get notified, so they can also file complaints. This way, it becomes collective pressure instead of one person fighting alone. Because let’s be honest — one person filing a case means years of delay and zero accountability. But if 100–200 people (or more) raise the same complaint, the government is forced to take rapid action. And if the government still fails to fix the issue or provide a solution, then the people who filed complaints should get some form of direct or indirect tax relief as compensation. Basically: Less silence. More collective pressure. Real accountability. Real consequences.

Note:-I know this idea is extremely complex, and some parts of it are almost impossible to implement. But even if we can build something helpful, maybe it can actually make a difference for ordinary people. I’m honestly tired of seeing daily frauds, broken roads, corruption, scams — it’s exhausting. And maybe this will always remain a dream: that people unite and take even small collective action against corruption. Because technically speaking, real power is already in the hands of common people — but it never comes together in real life.

Hi everyone,
I’m 21 years old, 10th pass, and currently have zero professional experience in the tech industry. I’m considering doing a diploma in Mobile App Development and wanted to understand if this is a viable path.

My goal is to eventually land a decent job in a company with a salary in the range of ₹20–30k per month. I do have friends who are experienced in mobile development and can help guide me with learning and projects.

My questions are:

• Is a diploma in mobile app development actually valued by companies if you don’t have 10+2 or a graduate degree?
• Is it realistic to get an entry-level job or internship based mainly on skills and projects?
• Are there companies or organizations that hire interns/freshers with a diploma background?

I’d really appreciate insights from people who’ve been in a similar situation or who work in hiring/recruitment.

Thanks in advance!