Top all-time · #3983
David Singleton
Personal blog · blog.singleton.io · on HN as dpsprogrammingstartups
David Singleton writes flurries of latent creativity, a personal blog at blog.singleton.io about programming and startups. Since 2022, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 23 times, most often “TOTP tokens on my wrist with the smartest dumb watch”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers mostly link David Singleton's posts on turning a Casio F-91W watch into a TOTP authenticator, plus projects like a sundial generator, a neural-network RC car and probabilistic spreadsheets.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- TOTP tokens on my wrist with the smartest dumb watch8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2022-10-18
- Coding agents have crossed a chasm3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-06-15
- Dreamer – why we built it2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-19
What Hacker News says?
This is one of the thing that smart watches should be doing, or even better, something like https://blog.singleton.io/posts/2022-10-17-otp-on-wrist/ .
Comment linking /posts/2022-10-17-otp-on-wrist/
on “A receipt printer cured my procrastination”Submitted TOTP tokens on my wrist with the smartest dumb watch as a story · 364 points
HN discussionThis is nearly what you’re looking for (well, not that close, but it’s got the right spirit): https://blog.singleton.io/posts/2022-10-17-otp-on-wrist/
Comment linking /posts/2022-10-17-otp-on-wrist/
on “A receipt printer cured my procrastination”Submitted The joy of building a ray tracer, for fun, in Rust as a story · 350 points
HN discussion>This year’s Advent of Code has been brutal (compare the stats of 2023 with that of 2022, especially day 1 part 1 vs. day 1 part 2). I enjoyed completing AoC this year. While it was very clear that day 1 (esp. part 2) was significantly harder than previous years (I wrote about this among other things [0]), OP's claim seemed not obviously self evident when comparing _current_ 2022 stats to _current_ 2023 stats, as fo…
Comment linking /static/imgs-aoc23/ratios.png
on “Dynamic programming is not black magic”Submitted TOTP tokens on my wrist with the smartest dumb watch as a story · 274 points
HN discussionThe F-91W is such a fun little watch[1] and people have done the weirdest stuff with it. There's a guide to make the mod on Youtube[3]. There's also the TOTP in a F-91W[2] 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6REKCs4-1M 2) https://blog.singleton.io/posts/2022-10-17-otp-on-wrist/ 3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLmAq0epfrI
Comment linking /posts/2022-10-17-otp-on-wrist/
on “Taking a $15 Casio F91W 5km underwater”Submitted I Wrote a Compiler as a story · 112 points
HN discussionhttps://blog.singleton.io/posts/2025-06-14-coding-agents-cro... The former CTO of stripe, for one. They show you the code they produce. Why wouldn’t you trust it after reading it?
Comment linking /posts/2025-06-14-coding-agents-cross-a-chasm/
on “Jules, our asynchronous coding agent”Submitted Coding agents have crossed a chasm as a story · 30 points
HN discussionIf you liked this you might also enjoy this little toy project: https://blog.singleton.io/posts/2021-11-24-probabilistic-spr...
Comment linking /posts/2021-11-24-probabilistic-spreadsheet/
on “Ambsheets: Spreadsheets for Exploring Scenarios”Submitted Coding agents have crossed a chasm as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHere is sundial generator for laser cut, which produces SVG.[0,1] It might be easy to make a 3D model from generated SVG in Blender and export it to STL. [0] https://blog.singleton.io/posts/2018-07-05-glowforge-sundial... [1] https://github.com/dps/sundial
Comment linking /posts/2018-07-05-glowforge-sundial/
on “How to Make a Sundial”Submitted Picowx – An APRS Powered RPi Pico-W eInk Weather Station as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAlso non-sensor applications: https://blog.singleton.io/posts/2022-10-17-otp-on-wrist/
Comment linking /posts/2022-10-17-otp-on-wrist/
on “Casio-F-91W die-shot”Submitted TOTP tokens on my wrist with the smartest dumb watch as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis post came to mind: https://blog.singleton.io/posts/2022-10-17-otp-on-wrist/ I doubt anyone wants to search a f-91w.
Comment linking /posts/2022-10-17-otp-on-wrist/
on “Border search safe TOTP authenticator app?”Submitted Dreamer – why we built it: David Singleton's new startup as a story · 1 points
HN discussionMaybe also overkill but I saw this years ago and thought it was interesting. https://blog.singleton.io/nnrccar/ https://hackaday.com/2012/01/03/nerual-networks-control-a-to... Also, I have built a couple toy robots that use "whiskers" to avoid obstacles.
Comment linking /nnrccar/
on “Ask HN: What's the best way to make a RC car drive around a permitter?”Submitted Dreamer – why we built it as a story · 1 points
HN discussionNo phone for a few months now. I feel fantastic and only had two issues. 1. Convincing spouse and crew to fix meeting times in advance. No more "I'll text you when I get off work". This produces a much smoother cadence to life. 2. Work RSA token. Put it on a computer next to my work machine. A more ambitious hacker could put it on a wrist watch: https://blog.singleton.io/posts/2022-10-17-otp-on-wrist/ . Company real…
Comment linking /posts/2022-10-17-otp-on-wrist/
on “Ask HN: Anyone started using a dumbphone recently?”
