{"slug": "blip", "name": "BLIP", "category": "files", "category_name": "Files, sync and backup", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 3, "warners": 0, "score": 2.697, "rising": -0.98, "first": "2026-04-28", "latest": "2026-06-18", "why": "Works like charm, supported on pretty much all platforms", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 0, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Works like charm, supported on pretty much all platforms", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/pmarreck/blip", "official_url": "https://github.com/pmarreck/blip", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["BLIP", "Blip"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 777456113, "item_id": 48591007, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48591007", "by": "johnvanommen", "date": "2026-06-18", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "What's \"neat\" about the Salesforce one is that you can run it locally", "excerpt": "> Indeed, Gemini really is incredible at image analysis. Yesterday I pointed it at some sloppy handwritten notes and asked it to add up the numbers in the right column, and it did it no problem. I've also used it to find out what TV show or actor is on screen, and various other things. It's quite impressive. I do not know if it works as well as Gemini, but Salesforce (of all places) has a model that does something si", "context": "", "use_case": "local image captioning", "switched_from": "", "story": "DeepSeek Introduces Vision"}, {"id": 767235344, "item_id": 47952209, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47952209", "by": "aagha", "date": "2026-04-29", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Blip is also a nice alternative", "excerpt": "Blip is also a nice alternative - https://blip.net/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Localsend: An open-source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop"}, {"id": 766968720, "item_id": 47935545, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935545", "by": "nightwalkerkg", "date": "2026-04-28", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Works like charm, supported on pretty much all platforms", "excerpt": "The closest I found to AirDrops ease of use is Blip https://blip.net/. Works like charm, supported on pretty much all platforms, works on local and non-local networks (P2P) and has no file size limit. I was pretty surprised it's free for personal use.", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform file transfer", "switched_from": "", "story": "Localsend: An open-source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["local image captioning", "cross-platform file transfer"], "compared": [{"slug": "protocol-buffers", "name": "Protocol Buffers", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 781408992, "item_id": 48838062, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48838062", "by": "pmarreck", "date": "2026-07-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have a variable integer length encoding scheme that beats out LEB128, Protobuf, varint and ASN.1", "excerpt": "Related: I have a variable integer length encoding scheme that beats out LEB128, Protobuf, varint and ASN.1 while also encoding/declaring endianness (but notably, leaving signage information up to the application): https://github.com/pmarreck/BLIP", "context": "", "use_case": "variable integer encoding", "switched_from": "", "story": "Almost Always Unsigned"}, {"id": 763396128, "item_id": 47712258, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47712258", "by": "pmarreck", "date": "2026-04-09", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I am not really advertising it so much as wondering if it's actually useful to others", "excerpt": "I recently came up with a novel arbitrary-integer-length binary encoding called BLIP (binary large integer prefix), which also begat a novel binary container format (which of course can be of arbitrarily large size) https://github.com/pmarreck/BLIP Anyway, a protobuf-relevant excerpt from the README: \"BLIP is 4x faster than LEB128/Protobuf for large value encoding (1.3 vs 5.1 ns/op) because it writes raw LE bytes wit", "context": "", "use_case": "arbitrary-integer binary encoding", "switched_from": "", "story": "Progressive encoding and decoding of 'repeated' protobuffer fields"}, {"id": 753916624, "item_id": 47119789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47119789", "by": "hackersk", "date": "2026-02-23", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I built an encrypted chat that stores nothing", "excerpt": "I built an encrypted chat that stores nothing \u2014 no accounts, no history, no traces A few days ago, I saw someone in a KakaoTalk open chat room wishing they could have a private one-on-one conversation, but there was no such feature available. In that moment, an idea suddenly struck me \u2014 what if you could just share a link, chat easily, and then shred everything when you're done? The urge to build it hit me immediatel", "context": "", "use_case": "Ephemeral encrypted chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN:walkie-talkie-style chat with no records,created with just a single link"}, {"id": 752054384, "item_id": 47003399, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47003399", "by": "hackersk", "date": "2026-02-13", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I built BLIP because I saw someone in a group chat", "excerpt": "Hey HN! I built BLIP because I saw someone in a group chat wishing they could have a private 1-on-1 conversation, but there was no way to do it without leaving traces. The idea hit me immediately: share a link, chat, and shred everything when you're done. I started imagining something like a wartime walkie-talkie for secret conversations. During this process, I became convinced that conversations between two people s", "context": "", "use_case": "Ephemeral private chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Blip \u2013 Ephemeral chat that stores nothing, anywhere. open source"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47933208", "title": "Localsend: An open-source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48836431", "title": "Almost Always Unsigned", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48581458", "title": "DeepSeek Introduces Vision", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47648854", "title": "Progressive encoding and decoding of 'repeated' protobuffer fields", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47119788", "title": "Show HN:walkie-talkie-style chat with no records,created with just a single link", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47003382", "title": "Show HN: Blip \u2013 Ephemeral chat that stores nothing, anywhere. open source", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 777456113, "item_id": 48591007, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48591007", "by": "johnvanommen", "date": "2026-06-18", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "What's \"neat\" about the Salesforce one is that you can run it locally", "excerpt": "> Indeed, Gemini really is incredible at image analysis. Yesterday I pointed it at some sloppy handwritten notes and asked it to add up the numbers in the right column, and it did it no problem. I've also used it to find out what TV show or actor is on screen, and various other things. It's quite impressive. I do not know if it works as well as Gemini, but Salesforce (of all places) has a model that does something si", "context": "", "use_case": "local image captioning", "switched_from": "", "story": "DeepSeek Introduces Vision"}, {"id": 767235344, "item_id": 47952209, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47952209", "by": "aagha", "date": "2026-04-29", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Blip is also a nice alternative", "excerpt": "Blip is also a nice alternative - https://blip.net/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Localsend: An open-source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop"}, {"id": 766968720, "item_id": 47935545, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935545", "by": "nightwalkerkg", "date": "2026-04-28", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Works like charm, supported on pretty much all platforms", "excerpt": "The closest I found to AirDrops ease of use is Blip https://blip.net/. Works like charm, supported on pretty much all platforms, works on local and non-local networks (P2P) and has no file size limit. I was pretty surprised it's free for personal use.", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform file transfer", "switched_from": "", "story": "Localsend: An open-source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop"}]}