Ask HN: What are you working on this year?
What are you working on? Any new ideas you're thinking about?
513 comments
Working at a still-feels-new-to-me job as Graphics Director for Opinion at The New York Times. Our small team publishes arguments and guest essays supported by visual evidence, like these:
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/29/opinion/scien...
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/08/opinion/urban...
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/20/opinion/ancie...
But I'm a believer in asking for help in order to cast a wider net. If you happen to stumble across an obscure-yet-newsworthy dataset, or have a strong feeling about a particular guest essayist that we should be approaching, or can't stop thinking about an argument that's itching you — pitches and tips are always welcome: [my hn username]@nytimes.com
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/29/opinion/scien...
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/08/opinion/urban...
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/20/opinion/ancie...
But I'm a believer in asking for help in order to cast a wider net. If you happen to stumble across an obscure-yet-newsworthy dataset, or have a strong feeling about a particular guest essayist that we should be approaching, or can't stop thinking about an argument that's itching you — pitches and tips are always welcome: [my hn username]@nytimes.com
This kind of interactive, bespoke content is one of the main reasons I subscribe to the Times. It feels like NYT truly embraced the concept of being able to tell stories and convey information in a completely novel and exciting format, and I find myself really immersed in these pieces all the damn time. It feels very much like you guys are _leading_ rather than following, which is damn impressive for such an old institution.
Hell, I remember last year's Christmas Cookies piece, which was just this lovely immersive slideshow of tight high resolution videos of different stages of the cookie making process and just thinking "this is just _good_ content."
But this stuff is also powerful because of its ability to inform people in a way visually that more traditional text and even older illustrative modalities would've fallen short with. This deep-dive, guided tour, expando-driven approach is just... awesome. Keep up the great work!
Hell, I remember last year's Christmas Cookies piece, which was just this lovely immersive slideshow of tight high resolution videos of different stages of the cookie making process and just thinking "this is just _good_ content."
But this stuff is also powerful because of its ability to inform people in a way visually that more traditional text and even older illustrative modalities would've fallen short with. This deep-dive, guided tour, expando-driven approach is just... awesome. Keep up the great work!
Don't have any pitches or anything. I just wanted to say that your team does awesome work. I hope you folks all know how much it's appreciated.
This is great work. I'm impressed.
Just in case you happen to know the answer: How does taking tree samples (as in your third link) not harm the tree? It seems inevitable that it would do so, at least intuitively.
Just in case you happen to know the answer: How does taking tree samples (as in your third link) not harm the tree? It seems inevitable that it would do so, at least intuitively.
I had the same question!
My understanding — relayed through one degree of separation from Daniel Griffin, the dendrochronologist who wrote the piece — is that the core samples are very long and thin, and care is taken not to injure the tree and to allow it to heal rapidly.
Here's a write-up from Carleton with more info about how the tree core sampling process works: https://serc.carleton.edu/trex/students/labs/lab2_2.html
My understanding — relayed through one degree of separation from Daniel Griffin, the dendrochronologist who wrote the piece — is that the core samples are very long and thin, and care is taken not to injure the tree and to allow it to heal rapidly.
Here's a write-up from Carleton with more info about how the tree core sampling process works: https://serc.carleton.edu/trex/students/labs/lab2_2.html
Not having read the much more authoritative response above (or any such), I'll foolishly offer the one fact about trees I recall from boy scouts or outdoor school:
The core of a tree is much less alive than the bark—so much less, in fact, that if you walk in a circle around a tree scraping off a thin strip of bark and make sure to stop where you started, the tree will die.
Having googled this just to be sure, I also learned that trees can only lose up to about a quarter of a circumference of bark (in the fashion describe above) before facing mortal peril.
The core of a tree is much less alive than the bark—so much less, in fact, that if you walk in a circle around a tree scraping off a thin strip of bark and make sure to stop where you started, the tree will die.
Having googled this just to be sure, I also learned that trees can only lose up to about a quarter of a circumference of bark (in the fashion describe above) before facing mortal peril.
Cork trees are an exception to this, and are harvested all the way round without harming the tree.
[deleted]
If you could dive into this:
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
and how Alan Greenspan went from writing 'Gold and Economic Freedom'[0] to pushing low interest rates that would be rad.
I'm not actually a gold-standard supporter, but given the huge shift what average people can expect economically it would be nice to have this addressed by someone other than the conspiracy crowd.
[0]https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
and how Alan Greenspan went from writing 'Gold and Economic Freedom'[0] to pushing low interest rates that would be rad.
I'm not actually a gold-standard supporter, but given the huge shift what average people can expect economically it would be nice to have this addressed by someone other than the conspiracy crowd.
[0]https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
I work in tech for public media and am it's almost disheartening to know what kind of resources other publications have. We have people spread across everything at once. Do you work for the technology department or for the editorial department?
I've been following the NYTimes tech development from a distance for almost 20 years. A couple of things I've picked up:
1) it helps to be the biggest
2) it helps to have rabid boosters with reputational stakes themselves, like Edward Tufte.
3) the tech group maintains the framework, but each section owns their own section layouts.
4) the tech group made a big splash ... eh, sometime between 2005 and 2009 if I recall, with a very early progressive framework. I wish I could recall the details, but it was spicy when it first landed, like "Wow, that's genius, and it looks so good."
1) it helps to be the biggest
2) it helps to have rabid boosters with reputational stakes themselves, like Edward Tufte.
3) the tech group maintains the framework, but each section owns their own section layouts.
4) the tech group made a big splash ... eh, sometime between 2005 and 2009 if I recall, with a very early progressive framework. I wish I could recall the details, but it was spicy when it first landed, like "Wow, that's genius, and it looks so good."
Makes me think of Mike Bostock who created d3 for New York Times. Amazing stuff and definitely made me smarter to work my way through how it works.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Bostock
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Bostock
And Rich Harris who developed Svelte while working there (and used by The New York times)
For the Opinion section. (Editorial)
Thank you for making JavaScript a somewhat palatable language. Countless millions of us have to write JavaScript to accomplish the daily drudgery and it's in part to your contributions and impeccable sense of style that it's at least somewhat enjoyable.
People probably think my praise is overblown, but if it wasn't for you I'd probably be using wasm to escape JS and the fight against flash would have been for naught.
Just a feather in your cap for the new year!
People probably think my praise is overblown, but if it wasn't for you I'd probably be using wasm to escape JS and the fight against flash would have been for naught.
Just a feather in your cap for the new year!
It's really disillusioning to see the top comment in a front-page HN-thread require payment to even be read completely.
I can see that this isn't your personal design decision, but there is a literal paywall preventing you from communicating with me. This is absurd.
I can see that this isn't your personal design decision, but there is a literal paywall preventing you from communicating with me. This is absurd.
Sorry about that! I didn't think to put in gift links, and of course I should have. Here are (what should be) unpaywalled versions:
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/29/opinion/scien...
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/08/opinion/urban...
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/20/opinion/ancie...
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/29/opinion/scien...
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/08/opinion/urban...
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/20/opinion/ancie...
On the first link scrolling is extremely slow on Firefox -- but curiously the problem doesn't appear on the other two.
(Also -- completely OT, sorry -- but science doesn't have a "photoshopping" problem as much as a fraud problem, as the author herself makes clear in the body of the text:
> With a sense of unease about how much bad science might be in journals, I quit my full-time job in 2019 so that I could devote myself to finding and reporting more cases of scientific fraud.)
(Also -- completely OT, sorry -- but science doesn't have a "photoshopping" problem as much as a fraud problem, as the author herself makes clear in the body of the text:
> With a sense of unease about how much bad science might be in journals, I quit my full-time job in 2019 so that I could devote myself to finding and reporting more cases of scientific fraud.)
Do you know what the rationale is for such long unlock codes in the URL?
FWIW, this extension has worked great for me, but it seems that the developer's support is dwindling for it: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/
I'm sick of having to decide between using cloud software and using local software. Cloud software so often needs subscriptions, and if the company dies I lose access to my data. Local software isn't collaborative. I don't want to email files around to myself, or think about versions.
So I'm building a software platform for local first applications on top of CRDTs. Its called Replica, though we haven't talked much about it yet. I want to be able to:
- Edit any data from one device in my house and have it just show up on any other device
- Share items with other people, and collaboratively edit with them
- Support lots of different applications - including multiple different applications live editing the same data. Like a universal plugin model.
Linux can't compete with cloud software like google docs because anyone running hosted platforms gets punished if the platform is successful. Ideally I'd love to get replica embedded in linux, as an alternative for desktop applications to use to store their state. Then users could open up the same app from different computers and have all their data there, and collaborative editing and things like that would just seamlessly work. I want to be able to open the same file in two different editors and have typing in one show up live in the other as I type.
I want to opensource the whole thing, but we'll probably go with some sort of open core model and charge for our official hosted version (which you want for backup and delivery). I want this project to be financially self sustaining - otherwise I don't think it'll survive. But still opensource enough that people can self host if they want to.
So I'm building a software platform for local first applications on top of CRDTs. Its called Replica, though we haven't talked much about it yet. I want to be able to:
- Edit any data from one device in my house and have it just show up on any other device
- Share items with other people, and collaboratively edit with them
- Support lots of different applications - including multiple different applications live editing the same data. Like a universal plugin model.
Linux can't compete with cloud software like google docs because anyone running hosted platforms gets punished if the platform is successful. Ideally I'd love to get replica embedded in linux, as an alternative for desktop applications to use to store their state. Then users could open up the same app from different computers and have all their data there, and collaborative editing and things like that would just seamlessly work. I want to be able to open the same file in two different editors and have typing in one show up live in the other as I type.
I want to opensource the whole thing, but we'll probably go with some sort of open core model and charge for our official hosted version (which you want for backup and delivery). I want this project to be financially self sustaining - otherwise I don't think it'll survive. But still opensource enough that people can self host if they want to.
My goal is similar to Joseph's (a platform for local first applications using CRDTs), but the approach is slightly different, as I'm building it based on SQLite synchronization using its session extension (https://www.sqlite.org/sessionintro.html) as the encoding mechanism. I plan to incorporate this sync functionality into my web framework (https://github.com/pkulchenko/fullmoon) to allow any application built with it to become "sync-enabled" with just a couple of additional lines of code.
cr-sqlite is a similar project on SQLite, but it's a standalone extension without a web framework.
https://github.com/vlcn-io/cr-sqlite/
https://github.com/vlcn-io/cr-sqlite/
Indeed. Matt (the author of cr-sqlite) and I have discussed the differences and similarities in our approaches. cr-sqlite is based on triggers, which allows all the code to be encapsulated in the DB (although the network layer is still needed to send/receive patches); my approach provides tight integration with the rest of the fullmoon framework relying on its network support and message processing.
Have you seen FluidFramework? It's open source (MIT): https://github.com/microsoft/FluidFramework
I think the first product they're building on it is Loop: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-introduces-loop-a-ne...
I think the first product they're building on it is Loop: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-introduces-loop-a-ne...
I'm working on something similar.
It's a Collaborative "Second Brain" or Zettelkasten, it's local by default but you can sync your brain with other people. Still in aplha. The local version is free and the collaborative one will cost per sync. So if you only want to use the local version then its ok.
https://github.com/ilse-langnar/notebook/
It's a Collaborative "Second Brain" or Zettelkasten, it's local by default but you can sync your brain with other people. Still in aplha. The local version is free and the collaborative one will cost per sync. So if you only want to use the local version then its ok.
https://github.com/ilse-langnar/notebook/
Really cool. I have with git-bug[0] similar properties (offline first, identities, generic "crdt like" base data structure... ). Maybe you'd like to have a look and improve each other's design.
[0]: https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug
[0]: https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug
Just a few projects that could perhaps interest you in terms of design of your own solution and I think that validates your idea:
Upspin: https://upspin.io/
Perkeep:https://perkeep.org/
Upspin: https://upspin.io/
Perkeep:https://perkeep.org/
Your idea sounds awesome and I hope I'll hear more about it soon.
> I'm sick of having to decide between using cloud software and using local software
However, I want to point out there's an additional option that is becoming more and more accessible in recent years and that is self-hosting, either on a local server or a rented VPS. Most cloud based applications have several self hosted equivalents at various stages of development.
Check out this list:
https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
Possibly your project falls into the self hosted category in some way?
> I'm sick of having to decide between using cloud software and using local software
However, I want to point out there's an additional option that is becoming more and more accessible in recent years and that is self-hosting, either on a local server or a rented VPS. Most cloud based applications have several self hosted equivalents at various stages of development.
Check out this list:
https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
Possibly your project falls into the self hosted category in some way?
I really like your idea. Might I suggest monetizing it via a marketplace approach? You completely release your product for free as an Open-source offering. Then you create a hosted marketplace for plugins where you take a commission for each purchase there. (I've written a bit about it on my newsletter https://unzip.dev/0x00d-open-source-business-models/#forecas... - last point)
I'm not sure how much this matters, but Replica is already the name of a company: https://replicastudios.com
In many places, USA including, you can have trademarks with the same names as long as you are in different markets.
+1 to this.
I really share your thought and sentiment on this matter.
I think an example of successful local-first is email and I'm still using email as my main messaging software. The fact that you can receive and send email seamlessly between different companies and organizations is just amazing. Sadly, however, now most of the people do not have their own domain and their emails are mostly managed by big corporations.
All the best for your Replica application, will keep track on the progress.
I really share your thought and sentiment on this matter.
I think an example of successful local-first is email and I'm still using email as my main messaging software. The fact that you can receive and send email seamlessly between different companies and organizations is just amazing. Sadly, however, now most of the people do not have their own domain and their emails are mostly managed by big corporations.
All the best for your Replica application, will keep track on the progress.
Do you know about Electric SQL (https://electric-sql.com/docs/overview/technical-intro)? It sounds similar to what you describe.
I love this approach. I'm trying to bake it in https://acreom.com - a local-first md. editor with sync and real-time collaboration(WIP) + plugin system in future.
This is something I wanted. I found remotestorage.io which seems like a cool idea but I am not sure it has moved much in the last couple of years in terms of adoption.
What's your opinion of Etherpad? Does their roadmap overlap with your vision?
Unless I’m missing something, Etherpad is just for text editing. Not arbitrary application data like we’re working on. And each etherpad document lives on a centralised server. At least, that was true when I worked with the original etherpad devs in 2011. I can’t find a roadmap for 2023.
Replica will work with native apps first. Data will be local to your devices. Servers are necessary for peer discovery, sync and delivery. But you can still make changes offline and sync later. Or ideally, sync directly between your devices over a local network.
Think about it like GitHub. You can use their website, but the data itself (in git) is cloned onto your local computer - and you can replicate it to other devices however you like. The model for replica will be similar: We’ll run an official website to use for replication, backup and discovery. But your data is, and always will be your own.
Replica will work with native apps first. Data will be local to your devices. Servers are necessary for peer discovery, sync and delivery. But you can still make changes offline and sync later. Or ideally, sync directly between your devices over a local network.
Think about it like GitHub. You can use their website, but the data itself (in git) is cloned onto your local computer - and you can replicate it to other devices however you like. The model for replica will be similar: We’ll run an official website to use for replication, backup and discovery. But your data is, and always will be your own.
I am not sure if this applies, but is the concept similar to blockchain... All the data is with everyone and still within your machine as well. Meanwhile, if the machine is disconnected then reconnect and update with other users.
No; its not like blockchains. The data isn't with everyone. Its just on your devices.
Think about email. Your emails aren't on everyone's devices. They're just on your devices. If you go offline, you can still read and reply to emails. But the emails you send won't actually get sent until you go online again. Its like that; but instead of sending messages back and forth, you can edit things and the changes you make get synced while you're online.
Think about email. Your emails aren't on everyone's devices. They're just on your devices. If you go offline, you can still read and reply to emails. But the emails you send won't actually get sent until you go online again. Its like that; but instead of sending messages back and forth, you can edit things and the changes you make get synced while you're online.
I'm starting a 100% Worker Owned For-Profit residential Trash and Recycling Co-operative
All profits go into the neighborhoods we serve and our bylaws are based on the US Constitution. No investors or different class shares. Management term limits, workers vote for CEO and a cooperative ombudsman (termed) for representation during yearly plan/budget proposal.
The CEO proposes a yearly plan/budget to the collective of ombudsman representatives, which vote to approve or amend. The yearly plan includes all P&L numbers for previous years, open balance sheet, salaries, as well as hiring, growth, acquisition plans for the following year(s)
I'm leaving out a lot of details of course, but the overall gist is that: incentives are aligned across the co-op such that management is incentivized to care for their employees above all, and there is no pressure from investors to grow more quickly than our company can sustain. Basically will not pursue increased margins at any cost.
We will provide the best service at a price that ensures we can fully take care of our employees such that they have a great life and can provide amazing service because they have the time, and trust to care about how we serve each other and our residential communities everyday.
All profits go into the neighborhoods we serve and our bylaws are based on the US Constitution. No investors or different class shares. Management term limits, workers vote for CEO and a cooperative ombudsman (termed) for representation during yearly plan/budget proposal.
The CEO proposes a yearly plan/budget to the collective of ombudsman representatives, which vote to approve or amend. The yearly plan includes all P&L numbers for previous years, open balance sheet, salaries, as well as hiring, growth, acquisition plans for the following year(s)
I'm leaving out a lot of details of course, but the overall gist is that: incentives are aligned across the co-op such that management is incentivized to care for their employees above all, and there is no pressure from investors to grow more quickly than our company can sustain. Basically will not pursue increased margins at any cost.
We will provide the best service at a price that ensures we can fully take care of our employees such that they have a great life and can provide amazing service because they have the time, and trust to care about how we serve each other and our residential communities everyday.
would be interested how this works out. I was working with people this way but it turned out people don't do logical decisions, they decide basic on assumptions which may not be true. somebody with a charismatic personally was always better to sell ideas and decision was not based on evidence.
> our bylaws are based on the US Constitution
What does this actually mean? (Could you link the bylaws?)
I find co-ops fascinating and wish you every success. And that the idea might percolate wider.
What does this actually mean? (Could you link the bylaws?)
I find co-ops fascinating and wish you every success. And that the idea might percolate wider.
I am curious what software do you use. Is it open-source? Is it open to collaboration? Is it possible to reuse it in other co-operatives?
What part of the U.S. are you operating in?
> our bylaws are based on the US Constitution
The same constitution that consistently puts a the party that gets fewer votes into power? If I were to every start a business, that's the last place I'd look for inspiration.
The same constitution that consistently puts a the party that gets fewer votes into power? If I were to every start a business, that's the last place I'd look for inspiration.
Over the summer I got into genealogy — my partner tasked me with finding her biological parents. I did, and afterward, I took a DNA test of my own only to discover that my mom failed to tell me something (she passed away a few years ago): who my biological father is.
This was a surprise to me, my dad, and many others. Some of her girlfriends knew this situation existed, but never got a name.
And so I spent my summer in what I call "old lady Facebook groups" and learned the tricks and the trades to investigative genetic genealogy. One of the useful tips you can apply to your DNA matches called DNA color clustering — it's incredibly useful: https://www.danaleeds.com/dna-color-clustering-the-leeds-met...
Of course, I didn't want to do this by hand. There were some tools out there that existed but they were "old school" software packages: you know, you install it on your own device! "Worse" yet, I'd have to give it my raw password — no thanks! It started there, and morphed into a lot more, and now it's used by "search genies" and consumers alike: https://sherlockdna.com
There's a lot more that can be done in this realm by both providers and hackers. There's a niche for these "pro tools" that exist but the typical DNA test taker is not after any sort of genealogical exploration that requires substantial effort. There is a very sizable group of people who do, though, and those people, I have found, are very pleasant, kind, and nice to be around. I like surrounding myself with good people, so I'm happy to help them while I scratch my own itch.
All this, and I am yet to find the guy I'm looking for despite having invested over 1,000 hours into finding him. I have, though, found over two dozen "wanted" individuals (not in the criminal sense) and united them with their searcher — at least that part is satisfying.
This was a surprise to me, my dad, and many others. Some of her girlfriends knew this situation existed, but never got a name.
And so I spent my summer in what I call "old lady Facebook groups" and learned the tricks and the trades to investigative genetic genealogy. One of the useful tips you can apply to your DNA matches called DNA color clustering — it's incredibly useful: https://www.danaleeds.com/dna-color-clustering-the-leeds-met...
Of course, I didn't want to do this by hand. There were some tools out there that existed but they were "old school" software packages: you know, you install it on your own device! "Worse" yet, I'd have to give it my raw password — no thanks! It started there, and morphed into a lot more, and now it's used by "search genies" and consumers alike: https://sherlockdna.com
There's a lot more that can be done in this realm by both providers and hackers. There's a niche for these "pro tools" that exist but the typical DNA test taker is not after any sort of genealogical exploration that requires substantial effort. There is a very sizable group of people who do, though, and those people, I have found, are very pleasant, kind, and nice to be around. I like surrounding myself with good people, so I'm happy to help them while I scratch my own itch.
All this, and I am yet to find the guy I'm looking for despite having invested over 1,000 hours into finding him. I have, though, found over two dozen "wanted" individuals (not in the criminal sense) and united them with their searcher — at least that part is satisfying.
Have you submitted your DNA results to 23andMe or other services? Is this how you were doing the "color clustering", by matching 2nd and 3rd cousins from matches on those sites?
I have no experience in the matter but presumably there's some research for familial facial recognition? So maybe you could collect family photos or "scrape" facebook local to your area to see if you get any hits? Its pretty speculative but maybe it'd be worth a shot?
I have a little experience in bioinformatics so I'd be happy to help inasmuch as I'm able, if that's something you'd want or need. Regardless I would love to hear more about what methods you've tried (and presumably been unsuccessful in).
I have no experience in the matter but presumably there's some research for familial facial recognition? So maybe you could collect family photos or "scrape" facebook local to your area to see if you get any hits? Its pretty speculative but maybe it'd be worth a shot?
I have a little experience in bioinformatics so I'd be happy to help inasmuch as I'm able, if that's something you'd want or need. Regardless I would love to hear more about what methods you've tried (and presumably been unsuccessful in).
Oh yes, I have everything under the sun: Ancestry, FTDNA, MyHeritage, 23andMe. I’ve even had the leading experts in the field helping me and working alongside me on this but it’s really just a case of bad matches.
There’s only so much you can learn from a half-cousin once-removed: her grandfather, born 1911, went to a barn dance, had a good time, and didn’t stay in touch. This man produced my paternal grandma according to my YDNA line — YDNA comes from a male and is passed to males. The YDNA has given me some direction, but no solid answers: I’m trying make a single male from a combination of a male from the most prominent family in 1800s Saugerties, NY, an unknown from Chicago (by way of Bohemia), and two unknowns from two different parts of Grand Forks, North Dakota (both Scandinavians).
And this all happened before the internet of course: 1860-1960 is the range that I am working with.
This h1C1R I speak of is my best match, followed by third-cousins. I’ve exhausted every avenue that’s been visible to me. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, it’s very uncommon to know who casually slept with who generations ago. :)
There’s a lot of census searching (and scraping, and CSVing), newspaper article reading (lots of juicy details in small newspapers) and some luck. I have a tree built out some 1600 people strong. Hopefully with the holiday sales, new matches will come my way that are helpful. :)
There’s only so much you can learn from a half-cousin once-removed: her grandfather, born 1911, went to a barn dance, had a good time, and didn’t stay in touch. This man produced my paternal grandma according to my YDNA line — YDNA comes from a male and is passed to males. The YDNA has given me some direction, but no solid answers: I’m trying make a single male from a combination of a male from the most prominent family in 1800s Saugerties, NY, an unknown from Chicago (by way of Bohemia), and two unknowns from two different parts of Grand Forks, North Dakota (both Scandinavians).
And this all happened before the internet of course: 1860-1960 is the range that I am working with.
This h1C1R I speak of is my best match, followed by third-cousins. I’ve exhausted every avenue that’s been visible to me. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, it’s very uncommon to know who casually slept with who generations ago. :)
There’s a lot of census searching (and scraping, and CSVing), newspaper article reading (lots of juicy details in small newspapers) and some luck. I have a tree built out some 1600 people strong. Hopefully with the holiday sales, new matches will come my way that are helpful. :)
Wow, crazy. Thanks for the detail!
Fascinating, I'm sorry your search has yet to yield results but maybe you could try to join up with a company that mainly supports law enforcement as I guess they probably have a robust toolset. I've heard of Othram through acquaintances, may be worth a shot
Since the start of the summer I have been building a SaaS for companies doing inspections and maintenance on separators, a certain kind of device for cleaning water used in gas stations, restaurants, garages etc.
I have been dreaming of living on my own product since I started as a developer 10 years ago and tried a lot of different ideas out but it just wasn't happening. When I found out that my girlfriend was pregnant with twins in spring 2022 there was this now or never moment. I thought there would never again be enough time available in my life to do something like that. I decided to quit my job to put a gun against my head. Then I contacted hundreds of people on LinkedIn and other places asking them if they had an idea on a product to build. One guy responded telling me about how far behind in digitalization his industry is and that we could potentially do something here. I went with it and have been building it since.
As the product starts to mature we have showed it to potential customers and the response has been amazing. We have been promised around $8000 / month from 8-9 companies as soon as we finish a couple of more features and we estimate that there are at least 100 potential customers in our country.
This autumn has been so intense since I'm doing this while doing 40h/week consultation do get money plus having 2 newborn kids at home. I feel very lucky though that I finally got an opportunity to go all in on my own product.
One thing I have learned: There are so many software developers with both the skills and drive to create a business, but what is super hard is to just come up with an idea. The key is to connect with people outside of our community. The whole world is waiting to be digitalized and our skills are in short supply. The further away from the normal dev community you go, the less crowded will it be and the easier for you to find an opportunity to add value.
I have been dreaming of living on my own product since I started as a developer 10 years ago and tried a lot of different ideas out but it just wasn't happening. When I found out that my girlfriend was pregnant with twins in spring 2022 there was this now or never moment. I thought there would never again be enough time available in my life to do something like that. I decided to quit my job to put a gun against my head. Then I contacted hundreds of people on LinkedIn and other places asking them if they had an idea on a product to build. One guy responded telling me about how far behind in digitalization his industry is and that we could potentially do something here. I went with it and have been building it since.
As the product starts to mature we have showed it to potential customers and the response has been amazing. We have been promised around $8000 / month from 8-9 companies as soon as we finish a couple of more features and we estimate that there are at least 100 potential customers in our country.
This autumn has been so intense since I'm doing this while doing 40h/week consultation do get money plus having 2 newborn kids at home. I feel very lucky though that I finally got an opportunity to go all in on my own product.
One thing I have learned: There are so many software developers with both the skills and drive to create a business, but what is super hard is to just come up with an idea. The key is to connect with people outside of our community. The whole world is waiting to be digitalized and our skills are in short supply. The further away from the normal dev community you go, the less crowded will it be and the easier for you to find an opportunity to add value.
Very nice. Having walked down this path: get the signature under the contract or an advance before you build "one more feature".
In my experience "one more feature" is usually a very polite way to say "no", and it can be a sign that you haven't identified the proper solution to their "hair-on-fire" problem yet.
(I've built the exact features prospects requested, and after showing the built feature I usually got another excuse, i.e. "I would also need feature y first", or "not right now", "no budget ATM",... )
If you nail the hair-on-fire problem people should be considering how to finance it or start asking "by when can we use it".
Having been a developer first, I also hugely underestimated the importance of a proper ICP, value proposition etc. Your messaging might be a big part of the reason that people are saying no or yes on the spot.
May everything work in your favor in 2023!
In my experience "one more feature" is usually a very polite way to say "no", and it can be a sign that you haven't identified the proper solution to their "hair-on-fire" problem yet.
(I've built the exact features prospects requested, and after showing the built feature I usually got another excuse, i.e. "I would also need feature y first", or "not right now", "no budget ATM",... )
If you nail the hair-on-fire problem people should be considering how to finance it or start asking "by when can we use it".
Having been a developer first, I also hugely underestimated the importance of a proper ICP, value proposition etc. Your messaging might be a big part of the reason that people are saying no or yes on the spot.
May everything work in your favor in 2023!
Thanks a lot for your advice, I will discuss it with my partner ASAP. Good luck to you too:)
"We have been promised around $8000 / month from 8-9 companies as soon as we finish a couple of more features and we estimate that there are at least 100 potential customers in our country."
This assumptions have been the death sentence of startups since the dawn of time.
Don't get your hopes up just with that alone. Don't count on them to buy.
Just wanted to reiterate the importance of the parent message.
This assumptions have been the death sentence of startups since the dawn of time.
Don't get your hopes up just with that alone. Don't count on them to buy.
Just wanted to reiterate the importance of the parent message.
Congratulations on finding market fit.
My old video game from 2004 [1] is now older than I was when I wrote it, and I recently found the C++ source and sprites in one of my archives, so I'm rewriting it in TypeScript as a personal challenge.
The C++ code no longer builds (it's missing proprietary dependencies), and I no longer have the binaries or even the hardware needed to run them (it's a PocketPC game).
If I manage to finish the rewrite, I'll get in touch with the rest of the team, to ask if they'll let me upload it somewhere public.
So far, I'm surprised by how readable my C++ code is. :-)
[1]: https://nicollet.net/blog/darklaga.html
The C++ code no longer builds (it's missing proprietary dependencies), and I no longer have the binaries or even the hardware needed to run them (it's a PocketPC game).
If I manage to finish the rewrite, I'll get in touch with the rest of the team, to ask if they'll let me upload it somewhere public.
So far, I'm surprised by how readable my C++ code is. :-)
[1]: https://nicollet.net/blog/darklaga.html
The sprites look gorgeous. This could probably make money as a mobile app! Did you consider it?
Agreed. Commenting as an additional vote of confidence in this project.
I've still got my Dell X50V stored away somewhere, if you find the binaries you're invited to contact me. My Gmail username is the same as my HN username.
I'm continuing work on the No Bullshit Guide to Statistics, which is an introductory book on statistics that includes all necessary prerequisites (practical data analysis using Pandas and probability theory math using the computer models from scipy.stats). It's been a many-year project (because STATS IS TOUGH!), but I've had very good progress in the last couple of months of 2022 (finished first few chapters) and now keeping the momentum going into 2023.
It's really hard to explain statistical concepts without bullshit... there are all kinds of formulas and rules of thumb, so it sometimes takes me 2x or 3x rewrites before I find an explanation that is simple enough and free of unnecessary historical baggage. One thing that I have going for me is the ability to use computer simulations to check all the equations, and generate nice visualizations. Seeing the equations + graphs + code in parallel makes stats concepts finally click... at least for the author, I hope for the readers too ;)
If you're interested in checking this out, I maintain a continuously-updated book outline here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fwep23-95U-w1QMPU31nOvUn... I also have a mailing list where I send chapter preview PDFs as they become ready (see the end of the gdoc).
It's really hard to explain statistical concepts without bullshit... there are all kinds of formulas and rules of thumb, so it sometimes takes me 2x or 3x rewrites before I find an explanation that is simple enough and free of unnecessary historical baggage. One thing that I have going for me is the ability to use computer simulations to check all the equations, and generate nice visualizations. Seeing the equations + graphs + code in parallel makes stats concepts finally click... at least for the author, I hope for the readers too ;)
If you're interested in checking this out, I maintain a continuously-updated book outline here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fwep23-95U-w1QMPU31nOvUn... I also have a mailing list where I send chapter preview PDFs as they become ready (see the end of the gdoc).
This sounds excellent. Will be keeping an eye on this. As I've been spending more time doing data viz recently, I've started to realize how little I remember about stats from college and am having to study back up. Unfortunately, the resources I've found have left much to be desired. My best bet at the moment seems to be going through MOOC courses to essentially retake my stats courses. But your guides here seem much nicer.
> Unfortunately, the resources I've found have left much to be desired.
Yeah most textbooks out there are pretty bad (aim to cover the standard curriculum, which is not very useful for most practical statistical analysis tasks).
Recently however, there has been a growing number of teachers/educators adopting the "modern statistics curriculum" based on resampling methods (bootstrap estimation and permutation tests), so you should look for those if you want a review that is more friendly to learners with a coding background.
I have another google doc where I've saved the best links to learning resources, you might want to check out while waiting for the book (it might take a while!): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GWyuNC4qCL5ecYSoY6GxvuhO... In particular the talks by Vanderplas and Downey in the section "Tutorials > Resampling methods" are all excellent.
Also, here is a four-part video tutorial + notebooks that I prepared, which gives an overview of all parts of modern curriculum (from data management, through prob theory, to stats modelling): https://nobsstats.com/stats_overview/README.html
Yeah most textbooks out there are pretty bad (aim to cover the standard curriculum, which is not very useful for most practical statistical analysis tasks).
Recently however, there has been a growing number of teachers/educators adopting the "modern statistics curriculum" based on resampling methods (bootstrap estimation and permutation tests), so you should look for those if you want a review that is more friendly to learners with a coding background.
I have another google doc where I've saved the best links to learning resources, you might want to check out while waiting for the book (it might take a while!): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GWyuNC4qCL5ecYSoY6GxvuhO... In particular the talks by Vanderplas and Downey in the section "Tutorials > Resampling methods" are all excellent.
Also, here is a four-part video tutorial + notebooks that I prepared, which gives an overview of all parts of modern curriculum (from data management, through prob theory, to stats modelling): https://nobsstats.com/stats_overview/README.html
My mom departed when I was 19. My oldest son is almost 6. I had a moment last week where I realized that if I applied that scenario, I’m about 1/3 through the time I have with my kids. Obviously it doesn’t work that way, but it was a moment that brought shock then clarity.
Life is fleeting.
So I’m working on “working” as little as I need to.
Life is fleeting.
So I’m working on “working” as little as I need to.
Good for you! A comment, purely anecdotal obviously, but after seeing my parents for the Holidays I was reminiscing about fond memories and actually (at least with my dad) many of them were around work stuff we did together. He worked on barcode scanners and I thought it was so cool when he would show them to me and explain how they worked. So sometimes, work can be family time too!
Absolutely! My 4yo is suuuuuper stoked about this robot I built and am programming. He can’t wait to make it do stuff.
Record some video while you're at it!
In 1997 I played my first online multiplayer game. It was QuakeWorld Team Fortress. It was incredible, janky, fast, ugly, complicated and absorbing. I found a community of other players through IRC and devoted 8 hours a day to playing this treasure.
By 2005 (a very decent shelf life), the game was all but dead. This was a significant part of my life gone.
In 2018 I found the source, forked it and began FortressOne, a modern port of this classic game.
There are now a thousand people on our discord channel and daily games in four continents. I’m over the moon but more work needs to be done. This year my goal is to get it on steam.
By 2005 (a very decent shelf life), the game was all but dead. This was a significant part of my life gone.
In 2018 I found the source, forked it and began FortressOne, a modern port of this classic game.
There are now a thousand people on our discord channel and daily games in four continents. I’m over the moon but more work needs to be done. This year my goal is to get it on steam.
so cool. the competitive quake 3 ctf scene was this for me. IRC from 97-2005ish was a beautiful time on the internet for me. discord seems close but doesn’t quite match that world for me for some reason.
i played a lot of TF in my life. i took a long hiatus from the HL2/Source based TF2 and decided to play again a few years after they added hats. i joined a game and quit after a few minutes, just before the barrage of crap ruined my LAN party memories.
i hope no one remakes Tribes.
i hope no one remakes Tribes.
My oldest daughter will turn 8 this year. These days I'm planning which would be best computer/software/OS for her (if any), but nothing in the market fits my requirements as a father. There is so much noise, distraction and overall bullshit in today's computers that I don't think it is healthy or appropriate for her.
So I'm planning to make a custom (software) solution. A small set of focused, minimal, productive and interesting apps in a controlled, noise-free environment. I want her to use the computer as a TOOL to enhance and complement her daily activities, not as a toy, an addiction or an entertainment.
(Think a PICO-8 high-res system for general usage, not only for making games.)
(And yes, she would be able to alternatively watch cartoons and play videogames, but not in this "work/learn" computer)
So if I have to build all this myself on my little spare time, it will probably take me the whole year.. :sweat-laugh:
I wish you a healthy and joyful 2023, dear reader.
So I'm planning to make a custom (software) solution. A small set of focused, minimal, productive and interesting apps in a controlled, noise-free environment. I want her to use the computer as a TOOL to enhance and complement her daily activities, not as a toy, an addiction or an entertainment.
(Think a PICO-8 high-res system for general usage, not only for making games.)
(And yes, she would be able to alternatively watch cartoons and play videogames, but not in this "work/learn" computer)
So if I have to build all this myself on my little spare time, it will probably take me the whole year.. :sweat-laugh:
I wish you a healthy and joyful 2023, dear reader.
Most important thing is that she spends a lot of time outside playing and interacting with other kids.
I cannot agree more with you, hence the "(if any)" in my comment. Playing with other kids is our highest priority, and that's also something I also plan to work on harder this year (engage more with other parents, less extra activities after school, etc).
But on one hand I'm a "maker" and I cannot stop thinking in crafting new things, and this could help others too.. and on the other hand I see she has an immense interest (and capability), which I'm always repressing.. and I'd love to find a good balance.
Thanks, I appreciate the comment :)
But on one hand I'm a "maker" and I cannot stop thinking in crafting new things, and this could help others too.. and on the other hand I see she has an immense interest (and capability), which I'm always repressing.. and I'd love to find a good balance.
Thanks, I appreciate the comment :)
The odds seem higher for that if using a computer like OP describes rather than a traditional ipad loaded with games
haha :D
Sorry, I'm not sure if that came off as an insult("the kid won't use that computer"), but just that the kid will probably use the computer to the extent that it is useful or interesting to her, and have an easier time putting it aside, which is different from traditional computing these days where everything is designed to suck you in regardless of what your interests are.
yeah I took it as "she won't use that" which was hilarious. But you are right, what I pretend is to remove the addictiveness part of current computers, and make it a useful, exploratory, learning tool. Which will demand effort from her, and will get her tired much sooner than youtube.
Coming from a similar use case, I'm all in on LÖVE (https://love2d.org) You can see some of the things I built with it at http://akkartik.name/post/roundup22
Are you talking about helping your kid(s) learn to program / learn to work with graphics-y things using LOVE?
Last I looked at LOVE, the community was really into using immature names for everything like SECS, LUBE, COCK, AnAl, HUMP, Polygamy, Swingers, Quickie, etc, which makes vanilla, Prude-y McPuritan me look elsewhere for such things.
Last I looked at LOVE, the community was really into using immature names for everything like SECS, LUBE, COCK, AnAl, HUMP, Polygamy, Swingers, Quickie, etc, which makes vanilla, Prude-y McPuritan me look elsewhere for such things.
When was this? And which community? I haven't noticed this either in the Discord or https://love2d.org/forums. Then again I haven't spent a whole lot of time in either, I'm mostly just building my own stuff. My kids are still too young.
One of my two kids was interested. I gave him my Apple IIci when he was around five (early nineties). Now he’s making the big bucks doing awesome stuff at Apple.
I recommend finding one of those. When you turned it on, the only thing you could type was Basic. As he got older, I just gave him my old computers.
Don’t overthink. If your kid is going to like computers basically the only thing you need to do is get out of the way. If you approve too energetically, she will start to hate on her thirteenth birthday on principle… unless she likes it then it matters very little what you do.
I recommend finding one of those. When you turned it on, the only thing you could type was Basic. As he got older, I just gave him my old computers.
Don’t overthink. If your kid is going to like computers basically the only thing you need to do is get out of the way. If you approve too energetically, she will start to hate on her thirteenth birthday on principle… unless she likes it then it matters very little what you do.
There might be a good idea here, though the post certainly triggered several responses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34186349#34188011
> a Raspberry Pi last Christmas and loaded one thing; a python shell "PlayOS" that I wrote to make everything a three or four letter command
> a Raspberry Pi last Christmas and loaded one thing; a python shell "PlayOS" that I wrote to make everything a three or four letter command
oh, thanks! somewhat aligned, and a very interesting conversation! good find, thanks
I'm interested in following your progress on this. I have a 2 year old who I want to show computers/computational systems to as early as possible.
I followed you on Twitter... but is there somewhere I can subscribe to hear more about this project in particular?
I followed you on Twitter... but is there somewhere I can subscribe to hear more about this project in particular?
Thanks, I guess Twitter is the best option, yup. I'm also in mastodon, same username at c.im. But I must warn you that I'm not the most focused, perseverant person..
I also have a 3yo, so if I'm late for the older one, we still have time left for our young ones :D
I also have a 3yo, so if I'm late for the older one, we still have time left for our young ones :D
Haha, nice. And same — maintaining focus is hard :)
btw, really cool work with Remake, it's really neat!
Haha, thank you! I'm working on something similar, but easier to use/understand now. [0]
You might be interested, idk.
[0] https://hyperspace.so
You might be interested, idk.
[0] https://hyperspace.so
Microsoft Surface tablet with Fedora, install some productivity and educational programs. Later you can show how GNOME Builder works and teach some simple but useful programming
https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supporte...
edit: if it's Python start with Thonny to show the programming flow first before moving to GNOME Builder
https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supporte...
edit: if it's Python start with Thonny to show the programming flow first before moving to GNOME Builder
Have you considered a TI-89? They are basically like early microcomputers, frozen in time. They boot to BASIC and can also be programmed in C and assembly with no operating system to speak of. They're handheld and battery powered and durable, they come with useful math software for school, and there's a hobbyist programming scene and a big library of software and games written by kids for kids. That's how I learned to program.
Nice, gorgeous machine. But I was looking for something more generalist than maths and programming. Although you say there's a plethora of hobbyist software too.. I'll take a look, thanks!
Well, the hobbyist software is mostly games and math/programming tools, though there is some productivity stuff. TI-92 is almost the same thing but with a mini querty keyboard which might be interesting for more general use. But there's no networking, no color, no audio, no touchscreen, no IMU, no USB, no GPS, etc. Limits the kinds of software you can build, but it's part of the charm.
What about buying an old C64 for her? I don't think that it is a problem, that it is old, if you make it interesting enough. I remember how proud I was at that age to own some old big radios to show to my friends.
Yeah, old C64, even a DOS, is also something I consider.. but I also wonder about the real value into going back to the 80s.. we are in 2023, after all! :think:
i would recommend a chromebook. cheap, simple, and probably what she'll use at school.
chromebooks are a thing in US schools, aren't they?, but not so much in Spain, they don't regularly use computers in public schools (at least in the area we live). But I do have a small Asus laptop with a great form factor.
Thanks!
Thanks!
I'm working on changing careers. After 10 years of struggling to find the right role/company/environment in software dev or product management, I realized that I just don't like making software. Period. Made some good friends, enjoyed some of the work, learned a lot, got pretty decent at the whole SaaS thing, but I just don't like it.
That realization over the last couple weeks has been a huge relief. I'd like to explore some things I'm naturally curious about such as agricultural waste management.
That realization over the last couple weeks has been a huge relief. I'd like to explore some things I'm naturally curious about such as agricultural waste management.
Do anything too long it can become dull and sap life from you. You should wake up feeling invigorated, not drained.
Golden handcuffs enslave us and true freedom is being able to have the confidence to side-step into new adventures. Good luck on your journey
Golden handcuffs enslave us and true freedom is being able to have the confidence to side-step into new adventures. Good luck on your journey
I feel the same, but how do you change the golden handcuffs? If I leave the industry I’ll never afford a home. If I look at jobs online I’ve seen commissioned officers in the army get paid less than me. I feel trapped, the more I progressed in the industry the more I’ve grown to hate technology.
I don't have a good answer. the money and possible upside of future opportunities in software are probably the biggest things keeping me tied to this work. I keep coming back to these things when I doubt myself:
1. what kind of person do i aspire to be? what kind of life do I want to lead and what example do i want to set for my kids and my family? one who is miserable but makes good money and is just in it for the paycheck. or someone who lives a life of purpose, passion and enthusiasm. 2. people who are passionate, excited and invested in something can usually find a way to make good money. especially these days. 3. being less than enthused about what I do might actually be what's keeping me from finding more financial success
1. what kind of person do i aspire to be? what kind of life do I want to lead and what example do i want to set for my kids and my family? one who is miserable but makes good money and is just in it for the paycheck. or someone who lives a life of purpose, passion and enthusiasm. 2. people who are passionate, excited and invested in something can usually find a way to make good money. especially these days. 3. being less than enthused about what I do might actually be what's keeping me from finding more financial success
Big change! Congratulations on the realization, all the best on the next phase and I wish you find it to be meaningful.
I’ve been starting and growing a live theater venue in San Francisco for the past couple years, taking a break from the tech world. It’s finally starting to build some good momentum and I’ve even got some paid employees now. This year I’m hoping to get it self-sustaining enough that I can leave it largely in the hands of capable management and start dabbling on the tech ideas I’ve been kicking around.
I’m especially excited about harnessing some of the recent advances in ML. There’s been a ton of exciting advances that haven’t been fully productized yet. And maybe ActivityPub has some cool things that could be built now that people are starting to actually get the value of federation. The last few years have been frustrating, with most of the smart tech builders I know wasting their time on crypto. But finally it seems like people’s eyes are clearing a bit. Lots of exciting times ahead.
But I’ve got to get the theater to a good enough spot first.
I’m especially excited about harnessing some of the recent advances in ML. There’s been a ton of exciting advances that haven’t been fully productized yet. And maybe ActivityPub has some cool things that could be built now that people are starting to actually get the value of federation. The last few years have been frustrating, with most of the smart tech builders I know wasting their time on crypto. But finally it seems like people’s eyes are clearing a bit. Lots of exciting times ahead.
But I’ve got to get the theater to a good enough spot first.
A theater theater? Will you be involved in choosing the plays or anything? Gather other patrons or sponsors to maintain it? Maybe build a troupe and train amateur artists?
That sounds extremely interesting, and something I would never think about doing coming from IT. I understood you want to take a break from the tech world, but mind sharing how the idea of growing a live theater venue came to your mind? :)
Cheers
That sounds extremely interesting, and something I would never think about doing coming from IT. I understood you want to take a break from the tech world, but mind sharing how the idea of growing a live theater venue came to your mind? :)
Cheers
Yep, a live performance theater venue. We mostly host cabaret, circus, magic, specialty movie screenings with interviews/panels, comedy, etc. We’ve even hosted mimes! Our biggest hit so far was hosting the Star Wars parody burlesque show “The Empire Strips Back” over the summer 2022.
In these Covid-adjacent times, it’s less about me picking the performances and more about hosting anyone who’s interested in renting the space. But yeah I do get final say in who we host and how I schedule things. Which is actually a huge responsibility; we hosted a comedy show on Halloween that was absolutely horrible and I’m still having to apologize to people for it.
I also handle all of the marketing, fundraisers, much of the tech, and did a lot of the initial cleaning myself. Also working with contractors on renovations, etc. For most of the time I’ve been the person checking in tickets at the front, cleaning up messes, doing some of the lighting design, etc. More recently I’ve been able to hire staff to help with much of this, but it’s definitely been a journey requiring a lot of work.
As for hiring a troop, mostly I’ve been focusing on renting out the venue to producers who are running their own shows including hiring their own performers. But we have self-produced a few shows including an upcoming Valentines cabaret. Once there’s less work to do on the venue itself, we will probably have more bandwidth for self-producing.
I’ve got more details at https://GreatStarTheater.org. If you’re ever in San Francisco, come say hi! Contact info is on the website. I also host boardgame nights there most Tuesday evenings, open to all.
In these Covid-adjacent times, it’s less about me picking the performances and more about hosting anyone who’s interested in renting the space. But yeah I do get final say in who we host and how I schedule things. Which is actually a huge responsibility; we hosted a comedy show on Halloween that was absolutely horrible and I’m still having to apologize to people for it.
I also handle all of the marketing, fundraisers, much of the tech, and did a lot of the initial cleaning myself. Also working with contractors on renovations, etc. For most of the time I’ve been the person checking in tickets at the front, cleaning up messes, doing some of the lighting design, etc. More recently I’ve been able to hire staff to help with much of this, but it’s definitely been a journey requiring a lot of work.
As for hiring a troop, mostly I’ve been focusing on renting out the venue to producers who are running their own shows including hiring their own performers. But we have self-produced a few shows including an upcoming Valentines cabaret. Once there’s less work to do on the venue itself, we will probably have more bandwidth for self-producing.
I’ve got more details at https://GreatStarTheater.org. If you’re ever in San Francisco, come say hi! Contact info is on the website. I also host boardgame nights there most Tuesday evenings, open to all.
After two years of teaching Haskell to highschoolers, I will complete my notes and release them as a proper web book. While working on content I also wrote (in Haskell ofc) a compiler for custom markup (something like Pandoc). The book will defiantly not go deep as some other books, but I hope it will be the best resource on Serbian for starting with Haskell.
Also, now when I have my dream tool for publishing, I am thinking of my next web book project (probably on Complex Analysis).
Also, now when I have my dream tool for publishing, I am thinking of my next web book project (probably on Complex Analysis).
Nice and good on you for teaching Haskell to highschoolers. Being exposed to some of its concepts at early age will probably pay dividends later on.
If you ever have something in English, post on reddit to r/functionalprogramming o/
If you ever have something in English, post on reddit to r/functionalprogramming o/
Most people don't fully appreciate the amount of material a truly interested and motivated group of high school students can cover, grasp, and learn.
Kudos to you for being so prepared that your notes can be published as a book, and by proxy, for creating a rich learning environment wherein they're encouraged to flourish.
Well done.
Kudos to you for being so prepared that your notes can be published as a book, and by proxy, for creating a rich learning environment wherein they're encouraged to flourish.
Well done.
This is so cool. Is there somewhere we can subscribe to follow the development of the book?
I'm working on NoisyCamp (https://noisycamp.com), a platform that helps Musicians finding and booking spaces to rehearse.
I mostly implemented all the features I wanted, and I'm now focusing on getting more studios on the platform.
I'm still working part time, and as a software engineer, it's a little bit harder to get motivated doing sales things than it was when programming the web app.
I mostly implemented all the features I wanted, and I'm now focusing on getting more studios on the platform.
I'm still working part time, and as a software engineer, it's a little bit harder to get motivated doing sales things than it was when programming the web app.
I'm working on a website to track the progress of bonsai trees. I like the bonsai sub reddit, the way people share their trees, but there is no good way to see the trees over time.
I don't do a lot of coding any more, so it is nice to keep my hand in. I was feeling pretty rusty. I also suck at front end dev so pushing my comfort zone. I don't know where I'm headed with it, but I am hoping I will find it useful, and some of my friends will too. I suppose I will keep adding features and see how it goes!
If anyone here likes bonsai then maybe take a look at bonsai-garden.com where you will find how far I got over Christmas!
I'm hoping this will be a nice distraction from my career for a while!
I don't do a lot of coding any more, so it is nice to keep my hand in. I was feeling pretty rusty. I also suck at front end dev so pushing my comfort zone. I don't know where I'm headed with it, but I am hoping I will find it useful, and some of my friends will too. I suppose I will keep adding features and see how it goes!
If anyone here likes bonsai then maybe take a look at bonsai-garden.com where you will find how far I got over Christmas!
I'm hoping this will be a nice distraction from my career for a while!
aha, I feel your pain on sucking at front end dev. my site looks pretty similar to yours, bootstrap, etc. and I have no idea how to get away from it.
This is an uncommon suggestion but what broke me loose from this was reading "the elements of typographic style" a few years back. The back half is minutely detailed font stuff. But the first half is largely about how to identify meaningful differences in the purpose of different groupings of text, and guidelines on how to visually differentiate them with typographical decisions like weight, letter- and line-spacing, small caps, italics etc.
Design is such a huge discipline with so many considerations and tools that it's hard to see where to get started or even how to evaluate your shit beyond "doesn't look good." Most sites are mostly text so getting concrete guidance on how to make text look nice and read easily was immediately applicable for me.
My stuff won't win any design awards or anything, all my layouts are simple and even book-like and I use the basic web fonts. But just carefully using a couple weights, small caps, and literally ONE accent color and I frequently get compliments from other professionals on it.
Design is such a huge discipline with so many considerations and tools that it's hard to see where to get started or even how to evaluate your shit beyond "doesn't look good." Most sites are mostly text so getting concrete guidance on how to make text look nice and read easily was immediately applicable for me.
My stuff won't win any design awards or anything, all my layouts are simple and even book-like and I use the basic web fonts. But just carefully using a couple weights, small caps, and literally ONE accent color and I frequently get compliments from other professionals on it.
Nice idea...
... sounds like I should pay someone to do it!
... sounds like I should pay someone to do it!
My project for the year is to design and produce an open source amateur radio transceiver (HF QRP SSB, for the hams) that anyone can build by schematic. I'll also provide Gerber files for the PCB's if I produce on (not sure...) and a complete online manual for building, testing, and operating.
The other thing: Travel. I've never travelled beyond the western US. I hope to get my passport and fly to one country outside of North America.
For work, focusing on keeping my support team amazing and helping the startup I work at scale significantly.
The other thing: Travel. I've never travelled beyond the western US. I hope to get my passport and fly to one country outside of North America.
For work, focusing on keeping my support team amazing and helping the startup I work at scale significantly.
- I'm pretty gung-ho to finish the first draft of my novel.
- I'll make as much progress as I can on my text adventure.
- I would love to update my Pico-8 z-machine "Status Line" to v3.0 to support said text adventure (add .z5, .z7, .z8 support). Then I can finally stop thinking about that project and mark it officially "done," bug-fixes notwithstanding. (https://christopherdrum.itch.io/statusline)
- If the Jai programming language releases, I'll definitely put time into it and that would likely supercede the below projects entirely.
- As a Pico-8 lover who is frustrated by some of its limitations, I'll tinker with Picotron now that "Picotron Playground" has launched. (https://www.lexaloffle.com/picotron.php?page=playground)
- Continue with my C studies. My problem to date is I just haven't had anything I wanted to build. Now though, I think I'd like to take a stab at making a text adventure language/system just to deconstruct and understand how that process works. Inform6 is tethered to the past too much; Inform7 is simply not my cup of tea. I haven't been smitten by the other options (TADS, et al). This would more likely happen in 2024, if I'm honest with myself.
- I'll make as much progress as I can on my text adventure.
- I would love to update my Pico-8 z-machine "Status Line" to v3.0 to support said text adventure (add .z5, .z7, .z8 support). Then I can finally stop thinking about that project and mark it officially "done," bug-fixes notwithstanding. (https://christopherdrum.itch.io/statusline)
- If the Jai programming language releases, I'll definitely put time into it and that would likely supercede the below projects entirely.
- As a Pico-8 lover who is frustrated by some of its limitations, I'll tinker with Picotron now that "Picotron Playground" has launched. (https://www.lexaloffle.com/picotron.php?page=playground)
- Continue with my C studies. My problem to date is I just haven't had anything I wanted to build. Now though, I think I'd like to take a stab at making a text adventure language/system just to deconstruct and understand how that process works. Inform6 is tethered to the past too much; Inform7 is simply not my cup of tea. I haven't been smitten by the other options (TADS, et al). This would more likely happen in 2024, if I'm honest with myself.
I self-published my first (and only so far) novel last year. It's an amazing feeling when you see your printed book. I still sometimes wonder to myself, "did I really do that?"
I wish you the best with your novel.
I wish you the best with your novel.
Thank you, and congratulations on your own published novel. I'm happy to hear a success story!
I'm working on a notes taking service [0] that behaves the way I want. All notes are organized in the (potentially nested) streams, messages can also have metadata attached which makes it easy and natural to keep track of any observations, be it travel notes, reading notes or exercises tracking. The big idea is to make it a place that would accommodate for any types of notes and any steaming messages in general, e.g. data from your smart home weather station.
Public streams have RSS, you can follow my dev and product streams if you like.
Landing page is rubbish, api is not there, but I hope it's good enough to present the idea. I've recorded a video [1] to showcase the features
[0]: https://dabdab.org [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJURq8PH_d4
Public streams have RSS, you can follow my dev and product streams if you like.
Landing page is rubbish, api is not there, but I hope it's good enough to present the idea. I've recorded a video [1] to showcase the features
[0]: https://dabdab.org [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJURq8PH_d4
I'm finally getting around to writing a couple of games. I started my career because I wanted to make games when I was a kid, but took a wrong turn into embedded medical devices, databases, the web... so I figure this will be the year I have time to make some fun software and worry about FPS instead of TPS.
I'll be working on refining my pitch about how bad everything is and why the system needs to change... And posting that into the void where nobody will ever read it due to big tech algorithm censorship... While working a day job which allows me to profit from the root of all system flaws which I keep complaining about because it's the only one I could find which pays the bills... A kind of forced hypocrisy.
Happy new year.
Happy new year.
This sounds like something I would've written. Know you're not alone in recognizing this, and best of luck! One of us will get he message across.
If you post proposals for change, rather than why everything sucks, you may have better reception. The internet is full of armchair cynics who like to talk about how everything sucks. But few people are actually out there trying to impact a change, even if just in the form of ideas.
This is not a criticism of you by the way, just an observation of what I've found actually works. By my nature I'm pretty cynical but I try and hold it back, it is rarely productive.
This is not a criticism of you by the way, just an observation of what I've found actually works. By my nature I'm pretty cynical but I try and hold it back, it is rarely productive.
The problem is that there are solutions available (e.g. blockchain and the decentralize movement) but those which managed to get attention in the early days were soon corrupted by the current system to serve the current system. Then the movement proceeded to discredit itself through intentional, repeated scamming of customer funds.
I think there is a chance that SBF of FTX will not go to jail because he is working for the system.
I guess the solution now is a legal and political one. Expose the crimes and lock people up. The scale of it will be of epic proportions. Probably won't be enough room in existing jails. We'll have to seize assets and send the criminals to some new penal colony.
I think there is a chance that SBF of FTX will not go to jail because he is working for the system.
I guess the solution now is a legal and political one. Expose the crimes and lock people up. The scale of it will be of epic proportions. Probably won't be enough room in existing jails. We'll have to seize assets and send the criminals to some new penal colony.
While SBF was a nice present for “the system”, him suffering the consequences it’s also part of the deal.
Legally speaking, there is no chance SBF wouldn’t do time, with a big probability of doing a lot of it. The mousie looking lady will also get it but it depends how much the feds got on SBF and if they need her or not.
Legally speaking, there is no chance SBF wouldn’t do time, with a big probability of doing a lot of it. The mousie looking lady will also get it but it depends how much the feds got on SBF and if they need her or not.
I think a lot of people recognize that there needs to be change, they just don’t know how to bring it about.
If you actually have a manifesto of sorts I wouldn't mind reading it.
We are building an early childhood literacy app focused on explicitly and systematically teaching the skills of reading (e.g., phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition.) The mission is to democratize access to evidence-based instruction and raise the percentage of proficient US 4th grade readers from 33% [1] to an estimated 94% [2][3].
If anyone is interested in collaborating, please reach out. I am especially looking for experts in sales and marketing.
--
[1] National Assessment of Educational Progress. (2022). 2022 NAEP reading assessment. The Nation's Report Card. Retrieved November 15, 2022, from https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/reading/2022/
[2] Education Advisory Board. (2019). Narrowing the Third-grade Reading Gap: Embracing the Science of Reading, District Leadership Forum: Research briefing
[3] Although the estimates of reading capability are for children to reach NAEP’s Basic level, the mission of this project is for every child to reach NAEP’s Proficient, which requires more than just the skills of reading.
If anyone is interested in collaborating, please reach out. I am especially looking for experts in sales and marketing.
--
[1] National Assessment of Educational Progress. (2022). 2022 NAEP reading assessment. The Nation's Report Card. Retrieved November 15, 2022, from https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/reading/2022/
[2] Education Advisory Board. (2019). Narrowing the Third-grade Reading Gap: Embracing the Science of Reading, District Leadership Forum: Research briefing
[3] Although the estimates of reading capability are for children to reach NAEP’s Basic level, the mission of this project is for every child to reach NAEP’s Proficient, which requires more than just the skills of reading.
Would love to follow the app's development, and/or beta test :)
Get good at rapidly prototyping games and software in general.
Last year I learned Rust deeply in the hope that it would be my “everything” language to build games, web servers, and CLI/TUI apps.
I like Rust but using it for personal projects taught me that I value higher-level tools as well as very fast prototyping and feedback loops much more than I realised, particularly for games.
So I'm planning to go back to Godot for game prototyping and Go for CLI/TUI/web services, then join a bunch of hackathons to help normalise fleshing out rough but useable prototypes in two days instead of two weeks.
Last year I learned Rust deeply in the hope that it would be my “everything” language to build games, web servers, and CLI/TUI apps.
I like Rust but using it for personal projects taught me that I value higher-level tools as well as very fast prototyping and feedback loops much more than I realised, particularly for games.
So I'm planning to go back to Godot for game prototyping and Go for CLI/TUI/web services, then join a bunch of hackathons to help normalise fleshing out rough but useable prototypes in two days instead of two weeks.
Do you write in GDScript for Godot? And do you have any resources you used to learn Godot? I’ve dabbled with it, but I’d like to get better at it.
I was interested in learning Rust for similar reasons as you but I think your conclusion is solid.
I was interested in learning Rust for similar reasons as you but I think your conclusion is solid.
Yes, I just embraced GDScript. So far it's been great. I haven't experienced any performance issues in my small projects yet (GDScript often calls APIs written in C++ anyway without much overhead), there are far more learning resources for it, and it's more conducive to quick prototyping than C#/C++ in my view. (Performance is also set to improve in Godot 4, apparently: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/70838 )
More on the differences and trade-offs here: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/getting_started/step_.... The piechart on this page shows the spread of languages in the Godot community: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-4-will-discontinue-vis... (80% of Godot devs use GDScript, hence them discontinuing the other VisualScript option that Godot has in the 3.x branch).
Resources-wise, I first worked my way through the official docs:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/
I'm currently re-visiting BornCG's playlist here (starting at the Godot 3.2 2D platformer section):
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLda3VoSoc_TSBBOBYwcml...
BornCG is a computer science teacher by day and it shows; I find his stuff better explained and paced than most other Godot resources. But you might want to explore some of the other popular ones too:
https://www.heartgamedev.com/1-bit-godot-course-youtube (paid)
https://www.gdquest.com/product/ (paid)
https://gdquest.mavenseed.com/courses/learn-to-code-from-zer... and https://gdquest.github.io/learn-gdscript/ (designed for those new to programming, and great for kids!)
https://www.gdquest.com/tutorial/ (free)
More at https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/community/tutorials.h...
More on the differences and trade-offs here: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/getting_started/step_.... The piechart on this page shows the spread of languages in the Godot community: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-4-will-discontinue-vis... (80% of Godot devs use GDScript, hence them discontinuing the other VisualScript option that Godot has in the 3.x branch).
Resources-wise, I first worked my way through the official docs:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/
I'm currently re-visiting BornCG's playlist here (starting at the Godot 3.2 2D platformer section):
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLda3VoSoc_TSBBOBYwcml...
BornCG is a computer science teacher by day and it shows; I find his stuff better explained and paced than most other Godot resources. But you might want to explore some of the other popular ones too:
https://www.heartgamedev.com/1-bit-godot-course-youtube (paid)
https://www.gdquest.com/product/ (paid)
https://gdquest.mavenseed.com/courses/learn-to-code-from-zer... and https://gdquest.github.io/learn-gdscript/ (designed for those new to programming, and great for kids!)
https://www.gdquest.com/tutorial/ (free)
More at https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/community/tutorials.h...
I first became interested in Godot and game dev in 2020 when I was bored during lockdown. As I got more hands on, I realized I didn’t know enough about software development to write sufficient code. Naturally, I started taking online software engineering courses to improve. This then led to a realization that I loved developing a lot more than the work I was doing at the time (accounting), and if I had to learn how to program anyway for game dev, then I may as well get paid to program professionally to further my skill set. Next thing I knew, I had quit work and was studying software engineering full time. A few months ago, I began my first job as a software engineer.
So my journey with Godot has been a long and fulfilling deviation. Perhaps the ultimate expression of ADHD. Now that I’m comfortably employed, I can get back to focusing on a fun hobby. Thanks for the resources. Those will certainly be helpful.
P.S. I’m interested in hearing about any projects you’ve worked on and may be excited to share!
So my journey with Godot has been a long and fulfilling deviation. Perhaps the ultimate expression of ADHD. Now that I’m comfortably employed, I can get back to focusing on a fun hobby. Thanks for the resources. Those will certainly be helpful.
P.S. I’m interested in hearing about any projects you’ve worked on and may be excited to share!
Congrats on the new career path and I love that you got into programming via Godot! You'll probably meet software engineers with similar stories. (I got into it via modding and building levels for early id Software games.)
It's certainly less stressful to get a stable engineering job first and make games on the side than the other way around, even if it's not as creatively satisfying sometimes. But a great hobby to have — hope you enjoy getting back into it.
No projects to share just yet, but I'm having fun seeing how fluidly I can get things out of my brain and onto the screen.
It's certainly less stressful to get a stable engineering job first and make games on the side than the other way around, even if it's not as creatively satisfying sometimes. But a great hobby to have — hope you enjoy getting back into it.
No projects to share just yet, but I'm having fun seeing how fluidly I can get things out of my brain and onto the screen.
Congratulations!
Do you have any suggestions on hackathons to join? I'm aware of the many game jams out there, but I haven't paid much attention to hackathons. That sounds like a fun time.
Depends what you're into and where you are, but these are the ones I'm keeping an eye on:
https://devpost.com/hackathons
https://www.eventbrite.com/d/online/hackathon/
https://mlh.io/seasons/2023/events
https://www.iquise.mit.edu/iQuHACK/2023-01-27
Itch.io is where I'd start for game jams:
https://itch.io/jams
If you happen to be near Germany/Europe and into games then I had fun at the Berlin Mini Jam when I went pre-pandemic:
https://www.meetup.com/game-developers-berlin/
https://devpost.com/hackathons
https://www.eventbrite.com/d/online/hackathon/
https://mlh.io/seasons/2023/events
https://www.iquise.mit.edu/iQuHACK/2023-01-27
Itch.io is where I'd start for game jams:
https://itch.io/jams
If you happen to be near Germany/Europe and into games then I had fun at the Berlin Mini Jam when I went pre-pandemic:
https://www.meetup.com/game-developers-berlin/
Thanks! I'll have to give some of these a go.
I am working on Magny [1] for the last 5 months. It is a universal search service, like a command palette. For those who don't know what a command palette and how SaaS companies use it, refer to [2].
Basically, you sign up for the service, integrate in your SaaS app, add commands and your users will be able to reach to actions/documentation/menus easily with Cmd-K.
The biggest hurdle is that there are several command palette libraries [3] but not many (even not a handful) services, hence we are trying to build something which is fairly new to others.
The platform is based on PostgreSQL, Nodejs, GraphQL and React Native, running on AWS.
We were supposed to announce it on December but decided to build a few more (required) features after talking to several product managers.
[1] https://magny.io
[2] https://blog.magny.io/command-palettes-with-examples/
[3] https://commandpalette.org
Basically, you sign up for the service, integrate in your SaaS app, add commands and your users will be able to reach to actions/documentation/menus easily with Cmd-K.
The biggest hurdle is that there are several command palette libraries [3] but not many (even not a handful) services, hence we are trying to build something which is fairly new to others.
The platform is based on PostgreSQL, Nodejs, GraphQL and React Native, running on AWS.
We were supposed to announce it on December but decided to build a few more (required) features after talking to several product managers.
[1] https://magny.io
[2] https://blog.magny.io/command-palettes-with-examples/
[3] https://commandpalette.org
I'm planning on transforming allergy care.
There's no reason for you to be allergic to things. The way we treat allergies today, with antihistamines and nasal spray doesn't solve the underlying problem; it just tries to cover it up. Accessible allergy immunotherapy is the future. And in the future, taking antihistamines for allergies is going to seem like taking a painkiller for an ear infection. Why would you treat the symptoms when you could treat the root cause?
This is what I'm fixing with Wyndly: https://www.wyndly.com
There's no reason for you to be allergic to things. The way we treat allergies today, with antihistamines and nasal spray doesn't solve the underlying problem; it just tries to cover it up. Accessible allergy immunotherapy is the future. And in the future, taking antihistamines for allergies is going to seem like taking a painkiller for an ear infection. Why would you treat the symptoms when you could treat the root cause?
This is what I'm fixing with Wyndly: https://www.wyndly.com
Feedback on your website: you could make it more clear that you are not targeting food allergies. The info is there, but it's hard to find. Related: if you can ever figure out a way to eliminate food allergies, I, and many others, would send you a nontrivial percentage of my monthly income for life.
Thank you for this feedback!
As soon as there are established guidelines for telehealth and food allergy immunotherapy and oral challenges, I'll make sure you know!
As soon as there are established guidelines for telehealth and food allergy immunotherapy and oral challenges, I'll make sure you know!
Have you tried OIT? It's not without risk and it's a big commitment but it can successfully treat food allergies in many people.
Wow, very cool! We're doing SLIT for my toddler's food allergies right now, and I agree a lot more people should be doing it. It's a huge pain dealing with the doctor for updosing and getting bottles, super inefficient and frustrating like everything else in medicine these days, so if you can fix that you're a hero to me.
I've concluded from recent research that SLIT is clearly far more effective and safer when started super early, ideally before age 3 and even before 1 if possible. And with so many kids having life-threatening food allergies these days, that seems like a big opportunity both from a business perspective and a helping people perspective. What are your barriers to offering treatment for food allergies, and to very young children?
I've concluded from recent research that SLIT is clearly far more effective and safer when started super early, ideally before age 3 and even before 1 if possible. And with so many kids having life-threatening food allergies these days, that seems like a big opportunity both from a business perspective and a helping people perspective. What are your barriers to offering treatment for food allergies, and to very young children?
We don't treat food allergies because there's no consensus on how to effectively treat food allergies through remote medicine.
I defer to my cofounder, Dr. Manan Shah, on our medical practices. My understanding is we follow the clinical guidelines to follow the standard of care established by state medical boards and the professional academies.
Also, medicine is slow to adapt to new standards, usually. The risk of a hastily adopted new standard can be life or death, literally. The industry, and us too, veer toward caution.
I defer to my cofounder, Dr. Manan Shah, on our medical practices. My understanding is we follow the clinical guidelines to follow the standard of care established by state medical boards and the professional academies.
Also, medicine is slow to adapt to new standards, usually. The risk of a hastily adopted new standard can be life or death, literally. The industry, and us too, veer toward caution.
Wow this is very interesting. I suffer every spring due to pollen and I grew allergic to cats in adulthood which has been a shame. I've been contemplating the allergy shots for years, but it seemed like an annoying process for something with seemingly mixed results. I'll have to take a serious look at this, it could be actually life changing.
send me an email and i'll get you set up with my cofounder + Chief Medical Director for a personal consult.
Systematically archiving, transcribing, making searchable the Russian state TV propaganda that’s in a large part responsible for creating and sustaining the war in Ukraine. Tools like Whisper now make it possible to do this on a massive scale. Hoping this will be useful for investigators when the war is over.
this is fascinating. are you putting it online anywhere? also how can I find out more about whisper?
Whisper is a Speech to Text model released by OpenAI: https://github.com/openai/whisper
Working on a tool to help consumers find products / watch for price drops that match their budget for a very specific industry.
Think camelcamelcamel with price charts (and other aspects of the products) tracked over time and Google Shopping so you can compare the same product among stores.
Hoping to get the MVP out this month, been tracking data heavily since ~last September and currently have ~150k data points across about 37k products in 32 stores.
Biggest problem I'm having right now is matching up products across stores, since each store can name their products differently, some like to add random text to the titles "NEW!!!!", and data points don't always match up due to the batch based aspect of the products. I have a very basic matching system working, enough to extract (some of) the needed metadata from products and roughly match the products.
Current version is good enough for the MVP launch, mostly just working on cleanup / UI work right now before it goes out.
Think camelcamelcamel with price charts (and other aspects of the products) tracked over time and Google Shopping so you can compare the same product among stores.
Hoping to get the MVP out this month, been tracking data heavily since ~last September and currently have ~150k data points across about 37k products in 32 stores.
Biggest problem I'm having right now is matching up products across stores, since each store can name their products differently, some like to add random text to the titles "NEW!!!!", and data points don't always match up due to the batch based aspect of the products. I have a very basic matching system working, enough to extract (some of) the needed metadata from products and roughly match the products.
Current version is good enough for the MVP launch, mostly just working on cleanup / UI work right now before it goes out.
Scandid.in is a shopping assistant with features like price alerts. We have entity based product matching which works for 98% of times across 25m products. Would love to give some inputs/help out if possibble, ping me if you are interested.
You should check out pricehipster.com. It was really good until companies started making it difficult to maintain a data feed.
Looks interesting and almost the exact same idea, just a different industry.
I am worried about the data feed aspects, the stores aren't exactly going to enjoy this, since they are the ones making the majority of the profit in this situation (my brother works at a manufacturer on the other side of this, so I know roughly the margins involved).
I understand it though, who would enjoy something like this coming out when your price for a product can go from $45 to $9 in a day and you're still making profit off of it... ex of actual data: https://i.imgur.com/jYUDriD.jpg
I am worried about the data feed aspects, the stores aren't exactly going to enjoy this, since they are the ones making the majority of the profit in this situation (my brother works at a manufacturer on the other side of this, so I know roughly the margins involved).
I understand it though, who would enjoy something like this coming out when your price for a product can go from $45 to $9 in a day and you're still making profit off of it... ex of actual data: https://i.imgur.com/jYUDriD.jpg
If you end up having problems with the data feeds I suppose scraping might always be an option. If your system can show price drops that dramatic, it’d definitely be worth it, even if it’d be more of a maintenance commitment.
Good luck, I hope it all works out!
Good luck, I hope it all works out!
I noticed that Price Hipster had affiliate codes in the URLs. Perhaps that's something you can do to win over the stores? E.g. justify their data feed with affiliate tracking volume.
I’m building a hostingplatform for fully managed Wordpress sites. By managed I mean both the WP install, but also plugins, themes and other customizations.
I have a customer who does marketing, SoMe, SEO and all that (as a small business for other small to medium businesses) but it turns out she spends a lot of time dealing with tech issues from WP sites (plugin update errors, other tech issues the hosting provider doesnt handle etc).
I’ve been a SW dev for 10+ years now and know very little about WP. But it has always seemed crazy to me how everyone in the “WP space” seems to be making changes directly in prod o_O. I know WP is mostly configuration management, but Im going to build a platform for hosting based on methods and best practices from “my world” (docker, blue/green deploy, multiple environments (eg for test), automated tests, etc).
WP wasnt exactly intended to be run this way but I want to build it as both a personal challenge, and to prove - at least to myself, that the current Leeroy Jenkins in Prod approach has a better alternative, and ofc because I have a customer willing to pay for the service. And to be able to provide GDPR compliant by design (WP) hosting (EU based).
Im using Hetzner Cloud for the servers.
Today I got a blue/green deploy setup working with docker-compose, nginx and wordpress images, in which WP updates are installed just by updating the docker image version, and the switch betweem active instance (blue/green) is a simple cmd.
I have a customer who does marketing, SoMe, SEO and all that (as a small business for other small to medium businesses) but it turns out she spends a lot of time dealing with tech issues from WP sites (plugin update errors, other tech issues the hosting provider doesnt handle etc).
I’ve been a SW dev for 10+ years now and know very little about WP. But it has always seemed crazy to me how everyone in the “WP space” seems to be making changes directly in prod o_O. I know WP is mostly configuration management, but Im going to build a platform for hosting based on methods and best practices from “my world” (docker, blue/green deploy, multiple environments (eg for test), automated tests, etc).
WP wasnt exactly intended to be run this way but I want to build it as both a personal challenge, and to prove - at least to myself, that the current Leeroy Jenkins in Prod approach has a better alternative, and ofc because I have a customer willing to pay for the service. And to be able to provide GDPR compliant by design (WP) hosting (EU based).
Im using Hetzner Cloud for the servers.
Today I got a blue/green deploy setup working with docker-compose, nginx and wordpress images, in which WP updates are installed just by updating the docker image version, and the switch betweem active instance (blue/green) is a simple cmd.
i have been beating around this bush for eons and so far my best release strategy is custom build wordpress container where plugins and themes are built in.
The problem i was facing was mostly that almost all of the plugins used in "general", do not come with a testing architecture in any way. How are you going to handle a "rouge" plugin not closing its <div> tag correctly?
I used to have "hidden" control pages where i would render the most used elements with demo content which i could check against. But then you throw things like composer into the game and most of that goes out of the window.
After all these years, my best approach is still making a backup, hitting the upgrade button, and praying :/
The problem i was facing was mostly that almost all of the plugins used in "general", do not come with a testing architecture in any way. How are you going to handle a "rouge" plugin not closing its <div> tag correctly?
I used to have "hidden" control pages where i would render the most used elements with demo content which i could check against. But then you throw things like composer into the game and most of that goes out of the window.
After all these years, my best approach is still making a backup, hitting the upgrade button, and praying :/
Great question! Its one of the things where Im very curious to see if my plans hold up when they meet reality.
I plan to solve it my a mix of process and multiple environments:
0) Base assumption is that Im starting from a working site and everything that may break it is going to be a change to the working site.
1) Every live/prod site will have a test environment. Like test.example.com
2) (process) The customer that wants to change something will work in Test. Or me, if Im the one indtaling the plugins. Plugin(s) are installed/php changed and then verified to be working as intended in Test (manuals testing basically)
3) (process) Customer never works in prod.
4) (process) When the changes made in Test are working as expected, Ill then update the docker images used for prod with the (verified) working changes.
5) Deploy new images to prod in-actice site.
6) Switch active / in-active.
7) Verify updated live site works as intended. If not, switch back to previous active bringing the live site back online without errors and go back to step 2.
Its not going to be absolutely error free, nothing ever is, but the intention is to (a) minimize the number of errors by enforcing some process designed to promote quality[1], and (b) when something breaks it should be very fast to switch back to a working site, so error fixing dont need to be done in a rush because the (live) site is down.
1: Yes the process is old school compared to todays CI/CD pipelines and multiple deployments to prod each day, but that is not the goal nor the business needs. A stable working site is.
Edit: not sure I actually answered your question. A broken plugin (missing </div>) would never make it past step 2.
I plan to solve it my a mix of process and multiple environments:
0) Base assumption is that Im starting from a working site and everything that may break it is going to be a change to the working site.
1) Every live/prod site will have a test environment. Like test.example.com
2) (process) The customer that wants to change something will work in Test. Or me, if Im the one indtaling the plugins. Plugin(s) are installed/php changed and then verified to be working as intended in Test (manuals testing basically)
3) (process) Customer never works in prod.
4) (process) When the changes made in Test are working as expected, Ill then update the docker images used for prod with the (verified) working changes.
5) Deploy new images to prod in-actice site.
6) Switch active / in-active.
7) Verify updated live site works as intended. If not, switch back to previous active bringing the live site back online without errors and go back to step 2.
Its not going to be absolutely error free, nothing ever is, but the intention is to (a) minimize the number of errors by enforcing some process designed to promote quality[1], and (b) when something breaks it should be very fast to switch back to a working site, so error fixing dont need to be done in a rush because the (live) site is down.
1: Yes the process is old school compared to todays CI/CD pipelines and multiple deployments to prod each day, but that is not the goal nor the business needs. A stable working site is.
Edit: not sure I actually answered your question. A broken plugin (missing </div>) would never make it past step 2.
Have you checked out caprover? It's sort of an all-in-one app platform, self-hosted app installer w/ one click docker installs for WP, Analytics, etc.
No, but now I will. Thanks
Interesting, I have a similar goal but in the Drupal space. My partner and I have been building Drupal sites for clients for almost 15 years and we keep running into hosting issues for our clients at scale. Most of the "managed" options get extremely expensive very quickly, but they're also not managed from a content/modules perspective.
We're trying to do the best of both worlds and provide a managed (albeit opinionated) install that leverages our experience on the development side with performance and ease of use on the hosting side. Would be happy to compare notes as it comes together. Our website is in my profile and our email is hello@ the domain listed there.
We're trying to do the best of both worlds and provide a managed (albeit opinionated) install that leverages our experience on the development side with performance and ease of use on the hosting side. Would be happy to compare notes as it comes together. Our website is in my profile and our email is hello@ the domain listed there.
Interesting. I have zero experience with Drupal, but I assume its similar to WP in its architecture since you bring it up :)
I think any good solution to working with these 50/50 code and configuration mgmt technologies have to start with a solid analysis and understanding of what the actual business needs are(?). And then (re)evaluate how things are done.
And then perhaps also pricing models when it comes to the ‘“managed”’ part you mention. I think, for what Im building, there will end up needing to be a “managed hosting” offering which is more restricted and a custom development/T&M work which will be hourly.
Could be interesting to compare notes when get more of the setup up and running
I think any good solution to working with these 50/50 code and configuration mgmt technologies have to start with a solid analysis and understanding of what the actual business needs are(?). And then (re)evaluate how things are done.
And then perhaps also pricing models when it comes to the ‘“managed”’ part you mention. I think, for what Im building, there will end up needing to be a “managed hosting” offering which is more restricted and a custom development/T&M work which will be hourly.
Could be interesting to compare notes when get more of the setup up and running
I've been wanting to pull the ripcord on a marketplace platform, think a shopify for WP Maintenance services and freelancers, or an unbundling of fiverr's WP gigs marketplace. Basically some sort of service that merges tools like MainWP with dashboards, issues, kanban boards, feedback for managing clients, logins, hosting issues, etc. It just always seems to broad and scope to get started, and I personally kinda hate WP and would probably do it all in Laravel. I'd love to figure out how to do something like WP Maintenance but for legacy Laravel Apps, but I'm not sure there's a market fit for that.
hey I've been tinkering around to build something on the same lines using similar stack. Let's connect? I'm hey[at]bilal[dot]dev
> I’ve been a SW dev for 10+ years now and know very little about WP
WP has become a gigantic ecosystem with its own sub-ecosystems and specializations that pertain to those ecosystems at this point. Seeing it as a 'Linux ecosystem, but as a web app' would be a better way to understand the landscape. Therefore, you should definitely try to learn more about WP because:
> But it has always seemed crazy to me how everyone in the “WP space” seems to be making changes directly in prod o_O
...even starting from the need to understand that, there are a lot of things to understand. People make changes directly to prod because making WP high available is very difficult due to the HA-enabled infra that is out today not supporting stateful workloads well, hence its difficult to have dev, staging, prod deployments etc. Especially because a change in plugin code or setting (an update, changing a setting etc) may trigger database changes and one wont work without the other.
And when you end up setting up one, it comes out way too expensive for any individual or small business to afford paying for it. As opposed to a managed, non-HA WP hosting provider allowing you to host a WP site that handles million or more visitors every month for $45 as opposed to having to pay $200-300 for a HA setup so that they wont make changes in production and they will have copies of their site running. Which, they can also do by buying another $45/month hosting and duplicating their site behind an IP-gating etc by the way.
WP site owners use plugins to make happen what they want to make happen, and a lot of these plugins need to be able to modify files in the filesystem to be able to work their magic. This ranges from being able to resize thumbnails to creating sitemaps to more complicated ecommerce application needs. Some need to modify .htaccess in order for a major feature to work. Others may need to modify the config file to add something etc.
And at that moment the whole containerization, docker, deployments, multiple environments thing hit the wall: If all the plugins are built into the container, they wont be able to modify the filesystem, especially their own files when needed. Which is a game breaker for any average WP site owner.
You could use an NFS to mount the wp-content folder, and that would fix a LOT of your issues. However, cheap, reliable managed NFS offerings are extremely scarce. And what's there is expensive. So you will end up having to rack up the price to a point where most people wont want to pay.
Even when you solve that, you still have problems - you are now building the WP core into the containers, and therefore are able to deploy automatic WP version updates and also having improved performance, great. But what will happen when you deploy a WP version update that breaks various important plugins because they are not compatible with that version yet? Boom. Upset users. A broken plugin and feature is most of the time is as bad as your entire site being broken.
You could prevent users from installing plugins and you could offer a selection of plugins that the users can use. Assuming that you solved the NFS problem. Then you could avoid version conflicts, compatibility issues. But then many users wont use your service because they cant install the plugins they want. You could have a market like that and a lot of web agencies do that apparently, but they are for their clients with specific needs who wouldnt need anything more freeform and complicated like most of the WP users do.
...
The best fit on the market for solving all of these is Google Kubernetes Engine + Google Filestore + Google Cloud SQL. (people complain about AWS nfs offering having spotty performance - bad for WP). But Google egress charges literally kill any chances of Google having any foothold in the WP ecosystem because with their outrageous egress pricing, a small WP site owner that hosts a middling WP site for $25/month would have to pay another $15/month for egress traffic costs on average, and that makes google double or triple more expensive for out-of-the-box WP compatible web hosts right from the start. And that's a variable price too - no WP site owner would want to pay a surprise $100 in a random month because their site has had more traffic suddenly. Standard WP hosts can provide everything from cpu/db to traffic costs even for a million visitors for $50/month fixed.
So anyone who builds any WP SaaS or consumer grade hosting at Google infra would have to start with 3-4 times more expensive compared to all other offerings when they add their own profit margin.
If you end up choosing to not allow users install plugins and themes, using WP multisite could be much better for your setup - it acts as a singular WP installation that can host an infinite amount of WP sites inside itself, with various plugin bundles activated/deactivated for different packages. You can build this into a container, and if you don't have any plugin that needs to use the filesystem, you can even deploy it in K8 in front of a managed DB and with the media uploads sent to some S3 compatible storage or something. (That requires custom code).
Also - nginx is not a good choice for WP. A large swath of WP plugins require .htaccess to be present and accessible for adding custom rules for their features, and this makes Apache the better candidate for such a situation. Apache with event mpm and php-fpm behind it is as performant as nginx these days, so you can just slap Apache and not ever have to deal with the rewrite rules that your customers will be asking you to add to nginx rewrites.
WP has become a gigantic ecosystem with its own sub-ecosystems and specializations that pertain to those ecosystems at this point. Seeing it as a 'Linux ecosystem, but as a web app' would be a better way to understand the landscape. Therefore, you should definitely try to learn more about WP because:
> But it has always seemed crazy to me how everyone in the “WP space” seems to be making changes directly in prod o_O
...even starting from the need to understand that, there are a lot of things to understand. People make changes directly to prod because making WP high available is very difficult due to the HA-enabled infra that is out today not supporting stateful workloads well, hence its difficult to have dev, staging, prod deployments etc. Especially because a change in plugin code or setting (an update, changing a setting etc) may trigger database changes and one wont work without the other.
And when you end up setting up one, it comes out way too expensive for any individual or small business to afford paying for it. As opposed to a managed, non-HA WP hosting provider allowing you to host a WP site that handles million or more visitors every month for $45 as opposed to having to pay $200-300 for a HA setup so that they wont make changes in production and they will have copies of their site running. Which, they can also do by buying another $45/month hosting and duplicating their site behind an IP-gating etc by the way.
WP site owners use plugins to make happen what they want to make happen, and a lot of these plugins need to be able to modify files in the filesystem to be able to work their magic. This ranges from being able to resize thumbnails to creating sitemaps to more complicated ecommerce application needs. Some need to modify .htaccess in order for a major feature to work. Others may need to modify the config file to add something etc.
And at that moment the whole containerization, docker, deployments, multiple environments thing hit the wall: If all the plugins are built into the container, they wont be able to modify the filesystem, especially their own files when needed. Which is a game breaker for any average WP site owner.
You could use an NFS to mount the wp-content folder, and that would fix a LOT of your issues. However, cheap, reliable managed NFS offerings are extremely scarce. And what's there is expensive. So you will end up having to rack up the price to a point where most people wont want to pay.
Even when you solve that, you still have problems - you are now building the WP core into the containers, and therefore are able to deploy automatic WP version updates and also having improved performance, great. But what will happen when you deploy a WP version update that breaks various important plugins because they are not compatible with that version yet? Boom. Upset users. A broken plugin and feature is most of the time is as bad as your entire site being broken.
You could prevent users from installing plugins and you could offer a selection of plugins that the users can use. Assuming that you solved the NFS problem. Then you could avoid version conflicts, compatibility issues. But then many users wont use your service because they cant install the plugins they want. You could have a market like that and a lot of web agencies do that apparently, but they are for their clients with specific needs who wouldnt need anything more freeform and complicated like most of the WP users do.
...
The best fit on the market for solving all of these is Google Kubernetes Engine + Google Filestore + Google Cloud SQL. (people complain about AWS nfs offering having spotty performance - bad for WP). But Google egress charges literally kill any chances of Google having any foothold in the WP ecosystem because with their outrageous egress pricing, a small WP site owner that hosts a middling WP site for $25/month would have to pay another $15/month for egress traffic costs on average, and that makes google double or triple more expensive for out-of-the-box WP compatible web hosts right from the start. And that's a variable price too - no WP site owner would want to pay a surprise $100 in a random month because their site has had more traffic suddenly. Standard WP hosts can provide everything from cpu/db to traffic costs even for a million visitors for $50/month fixed.
So anyone who builds any WP SaaS or consumer grade hosting at Google infra would have to start with 3-4 times more expensive compared to all other offerings when they add their own profit margin.
If you end up choosing to not allow users install plugins and themes, using WP multisite could be much better for your setup - it acts as a singular WP installation that can host an infinite amount of WP sites inside itself, with various plugin bundles activated/deactivated for different packages. You can build this into a container, and if you don't have any plugin that needs to use the filesystem, you can even deploy it in K8 in front of a managed DB and with the media uploads sent to some S3 compatible storage or something. (That requires custom code).
Also - nginx is not a good choice for WP. A large swath of WP plugins require .htaccess to be present and accessible for adding custom rules for their features, and this makes Apache the better candidate for such a situation. Apache with event mpm and php-fpm behind it is as performant as nginx these days, so you can just slap Apache and not ever have to deal with the rewrite rules that your customers will be asking you to add to nginx rewrites.
At a first read through there seems to be a of usefull knowledge and experience in your post. So I’ll surely go through it in detail and take away everything I can.
That being said, unfortunately you have a few assumptions, that makes some of what you write less relevant.
> But then many users wont use your service because they cant install the plugins they want.
This is sort of the core misunderstanding: This setup is defined for one customer (marketing agency) so I dont really care how the masses would like to use WP hosting. And in extension of this users will not be allowed to freely install plugins, customizations etc. That is want it means for this to be “fully managed” (I wrote about what and how in another comment above). The business need for this thing came about in the first place because the customer didnt not want to be the one to fiddle with webservers, plugins and updates. So the goal is to build something that strikes a balance between enabling the customer to deliver their (marketing stuff) to their clients and doing it in a controlled manner, for an acceptable price. Restrictions and processes are going to drive prices down, while the need for flexibility and time-to-deliver will drive price up. The question is if there exists a balance thats acceptable to all parties.
On a more overall level, I’ll add that I get how WP has become a huge ecosystem like you say. But part of why I fint this little project interesting is that, in my eyes, its an ecosystem that has evolved through thousands of low-tech users (certainly not experienced devs) hacking together bad, but somewhat functioning, solutions and making so many bad tech decisions along the way, resulting in a mountain of tech debt which leads to all of the stacked problems you describe in your comment. I think you are completely correct in all the issues you describe, but Im interested in whats possible to do if all the usual ways of doing things in this ecosystem is thrown out the window, and we look at how things should be done. Is it possible that a better solution doesnt exist? Sure! But wont know still we try.
There is just so many ingrown “bad things” that seems to be the norm in this WP world, that would not even be considered in a more regular sw development situation: Imagine giving the somewhat “tech savy” end user access to the C# codebase, installing nuget packages (WP: plugins), making code changes (WP: functions.php) and messing with appsettings (WP: configs).. and directly in prod. Its just too far out. I wont even let the senior devs on my team deploy code changes directly to prod. We have git, PRs, reviews, tests, build pipelines, test environments and so on.. We’re not savages. Or, a less dramatic example: a few comments/people have asked now, what I’ll do about “that broken plugin which breaks the site”. Well, I’m not going to use it - its broken!? Just like I’m not using broken python packages.
That being said, unfortunately you have a few assumptions, that makes some of what you write less relevant.
> But then many users wont use your service because they cant install the plugins they want.
This is sort of the core misunderstanding: This setup is defined for one customer (marketing agency) so I dont really care how the masses would like to use WP hosting. And in extension of this users will not be allowed to freely install plugins, customizations etc. That is want it means for this to be “fully managed” (I wrote about what and how in another comment above). The business need for this thing came about in the first place because the customer didnt not want to be the one to fiddle with webservers, plugins and updates. So the goal is to build something that strikes a balance between enabling the customer to deliver their (marketing stuff) to their clients and doing it in a controlled manner, for an acceptable price. Restrictions and processes are going to drive prices down, while the need for flexibility and time-to-deliver will drive price up. The question is if there exists a balance thats acceptable to all parties.
On a more overall level, I’ll add that I get how WP has become a huge ecosystem like you say. But part of why I fint this little project interesting is that, in my eyes, its an ecosystem that has evolved through thousands of low-tech users (certainly not experienced devs) hacking together bad, but somewhat functioning, solutions and making so many bad tech decisions along the way, resulting in a mountain of tech debt which leads to all of the stacked problems you describe in your comment. I think you are completely correct in all the issues you describe, but Im interested in whats possible to do if all the usual ways of doing things in this ecosystem is thrown out the window, and we look at how things should be done. Is it possible that a better solution doesnt exist? Sure! But wont know still we try.
There is just so many ingrown “bad things” that seems to be the norm in this WP world, that would not even be considered in a more regular sw development situation: Imagine giving the somewhat “tech savy” end user access to the C# codebase, installing nuget packages (WP: plugins), making code changes (WP: functions.php) and messing with appsettings (WP: configs).. and directly in prod. Its just too far out. I wont even let the senior devs on my team deploy code changes directly to prod. We have git, PRs, reviews, tests, build pipelines, test environments and so on.. We’re not savages. Or, a less dramatic example: a few comments/people have asked now, what I’ll do about “that broken plugin which breaks the site”. Well, I’m not going to use it - its broken!? Just like I’m not using broken python packages.
> This is sort of the core misunderstanding: This setup is defined for one customer (marketing agency) so I dont really care how the masses would like to use WP hosting
In case you missed, I already made an example of that case. It is a workable format in the WP ecosystem and there are many who use it. However, the market for it is limited to the customers whose needs fit the specific features you provide. That said, its definitely possible to establish a small business with that format. But its naturally limited, and in the higher tiers the competition is fierce.
> I’ll add that I get how WP has become a huge ecosystem like you say. But part of why I fint this little project interesting is that, in my eyes, its an ecosystem that has evolved through thousands of low-tech users (certainly not experienced devs) hacking together bad, but somewhat functioning, solutions and making so many bad tech decisions along the way
That's the perspective mistake what a lot of people who are new into WP make. I thought similarly way back.
However as you get immersed in the ecosystem, first you see that things work quite well and they are not merely 'somewhat functioning', and the tech choices made by everyone exactly fit their budget, their needs and what's maintainable. People end up making the mistake of providing 'better solutions' that will surely help the 'bad tech choices' in a given use case a few times. Only swiftly to learn that there were reasons why that particular use-case and its sub-ecosystem developed, and those reasons almost 100% coincide with the business needs of that sub-ecosystem.
Case in point:
> mountain of tech debt which leads to all of the stacked problems you describe in your comment
Being filesystem-dependent never was tech debt. At the point WP and its ecosystem came to being, there was no availability of reliable NFS setups, leave aside anything being affordable for the broad public in any way. Coupled with the plugins needing filesystem features to provide features and enhance the sites, being stateful was a good choice.
Today its little different - the majority of WP ecosystem uses plugins and thats why WP is big - anyone needing to any kind of thing can find enough plugins to make it happen. Hence the need for the filesystem.
Like you are planning, its possible to identify a narrow set of feature needs and compile a list of plugins and themes to create a rather rigid version of WP and even turn it stateful. But this is a sub-ecosystem of WP and WP would never ever become what it is if it was this limited from the start. In the end, the plugins that you are going to compile into your WP distro will be plugins that were made for use in stateful sites to start with.
So in a sense, this is not WP's tech debt - its the Internet technology's tech debt - it was built on stateful apps, and those who were running stateless workloads were few at the dawn of the Internet. When the stateful workload problem is solved (either by K8 or by some other tech) this problem will be auto-fixed.
> Imagine giving the somewhat “tech savy” end user access to the C# codebase, installing nuget packages (WP: plugins), making code changes (WP: functions.php) and messing with appsettings (WP: configs).. and directly in prod. Its just too far out
That is why no more 'properly done' and 'well engineered' cmses, platforms have never taken off: The flower shop owner somewhere in Oregon or the Japanese blogger in Tokyo needs specific features for his or her website/shop. These are provided by plugins that immediately implement those features to his site at ridiculously low cost and effort. As his or her business scales, things will keep the same rhytm, with solutions that require major monetary and time investment for 'more properly engineered' solutions demanding insignificant investment of money and time from him. Over time, he or she will end up being proficient in this easy-to-use system to be able to run his WP-based site/shop single handedly, whereas similar setups require considerable money and even teams to set up and maintain with 'properly engineered' solutions. Naturally, he will never go near any such solution.
> We’re not savages.
Thats a very crappy way to look at this. The flower shop owner above will not like that kind of perspective. Neither the rest of the WP ecosystem. Such attitude and arrogance is not well-received. Especially keep it away from any support/comment thread at WP.org. You would get very harshly rebuked.
> Or, a less dramatic example: a few comments/people have asked now, what I’ll do about “that broken plugin which breaks the site”. Well, I’m not going to use it
Your users would eventually force you to make it happen, or they would just move somewhere else. If youre lucky, some of them would even generate enough noise and feedback for you to notice so that you could address the situation. Otherwise the majority just silently moves on to somewhere else since there are a plethora of WP services for anything. This is before the fact that there are plugins that you have to use even if it breaks some site. Its the providers' obligation to fix it and make things happen.
WP is all about making things happen fast and with reasonable cost. In between a service that does things right 98% of the time much easier and with lower cost and one that does everything right and 'properly engineered' 100% of the time, the users will go with the 98% one. The other one won't even enter the picture to be considered. The hardcore reality of real life economics is much different than the reality of the engineering in large organizations in which engineering can be done in specific ways without being able to demonstrate total business justification, thanks to being shielded from the market economics due to the large capital and complexity of such organizations being a wall that separates them.
Large marketing clients are much more workable in that regard and that's a good choice. But those large marketing clients will also have demands for features like the general WP users, even if the demand frequency may be much lower than the average. However make no mistake - even if they are larger users/customers who may have been fed up with maintaining sites and plugins, they are still WP users.
...
Your approach and attitude reminds me of mine way back. WP ecosystem taught me a lot about the real world, actual business needs, what really matters and changed my entire perspective. Especially interacting with customers/users teaches an engineer like nothing else could. So it will be a maturing journey however you look at it.
In case you missed, I already made an example of that case. It is a workable format in the WP ecosystem and there are many who use it. However, the market for it is limited to the customers whose needs fit the specific features you provide. That said, its definitely possible to establish a small business with that format. But its naturally limited, and in the higher tiers the competition is fierce.
> I’ll add that I get how WP has become a huge ecosystem like you say. But part of why I fint this little project interesting is that, in my eyes, its an ecosystem that has evolved through thousands of low-tech users (certainly not experienced devs) hacking together bad, but somewhat functioning, solutions and making so many bad tech decisions along the way
That's the perspective mistake what a lot of people who are new into WP make. I thought similarly way back.
However as you get immersed in the ecosystem, first you see that things work quite well and they are not merely 'somewhat functioning', and the tech choices made by everyone exactly fit their budget, their needs and what's maintainable. People end up making the mistake of providing 'better solutions' that will surely help the 'bad tech choices' in a given use case a few times. Only swiftly to learn that there were reasons why that particular use-case and its sub-ecosystem developed, and those reasons almost 100% coincide with the business needs of that sub-ecosystem.
Case in point:
> mountain of tech debt which leads to all of the stacked problems you describe in your comment
Being filesystem-dependent never was tech debt. At the point WP and its ecosystem came to being, there was no availability of reliable NFS setups, leave aside anything being affordable for the broad public in any way. Coupled with the plugins needing filesystem features to provide features and enhance the sites, being stateful was a good choice.
Today its little different - the majority of WP ecosystem uses plugins and thats why WP is big - anyone needing to any kind of thing can find enough plugins to make it happen. Hence the need for the filesystem.
Like you are planning, its possible to identify a narrow set of feature needs and compile a list of plugins and themes to create a rather rigid version of WP and even turn it stateful. But this is a sub-ecosystem of WP and WP would never ever become what it is if it was this limited from the start. In the end, the plugins that you are going to compile into your WP distro will be plugins that were made for use in stateful sites to start with.
So in a sense, this is not WP's tech debt - its the Internet technology's tech debt - it was built on stateful apps, and those who were running stateless workloads were few at the dawn of the Internet. When the stateful workload problem is solved (either by K8 or by some other tech) this problem will be auto-fixed.
> Imagine giving the somewhat “tech savy” end user access to the C# codebase, installing nuget packages (WP: plugins), making code changes (WP: functions.php) and messing with appsettings (WP: configs).. and directly in prod. Its just too far out
That is why no more 'properly done' and 'well engineered' cmses, platforms have never taken off: The flower shop owner somewhere in Oregon or the Japanese blogger in Tokyo needs specific features for his or her website/shop. These are provided by plugins that immediately implement those features to his site at ridiculously low cost and effort. As his or her business scales, things will keep the same rhytm, with solutions that require major monetary and time investment for 'more properly engineered' solutions demanding insignificant investment of money and time from him. Over time, he or she will end up being proficient in this easy-to-use system to be able to run his WP-based site/shop single handedly, whereas similar setups require considerable money and even teams to set up and maintain with 'properly engineered' solutions. Naturally, he will never go near any such solution.
> We’re not savages.
Thats a very crappy way to look at this. The flower shop owner above will not like that kind of perspective. Neither the rest of the WP ecosystem. Such attitude and arrogance is not well-received. Especially keep it away from any support/comment thread at WP.org. You would get very harshly rebuked.
> Or, a less dramatic example: a few comments/people have asked now, what I’ll do about “that broken plugin which breaks the site”. Well, I’m not going to use it
Your users would eventually force you to make it happen, or they would just move somewhere else. If youre lucky, some of them would even generate enough noise and feedback for you to notice so that you could address the situation. Otherwise the majority just silently moves on to somewhere else since there are a plethora of WP services for anything. This is before the fact that there are plugins that you have to use even if it breaks some site. Its the providers' obligation to fix it and make things happen.
WP is all about making things happen fast and with reasonable cost. In between a service that does things right 98% of the time much easier and with lower cost and one that does everything right and 'properly engineered' 100% of the time, the users will go with the 98% one. The other one won't even enter the picture to be considered. The hardcore reality of real life economics is much different than the reality of the engineering in large organizations in which engineering can be done in specific ways without being able to demonstrate total business justification, thanks to being shielded from the market economics due to the large capital and complexity of such organizations being a wall that separates them.
Large marketing clients are much more workable in that regard and that's a good choice. But those large marketing clients will also have demands for features like the general WP users, even if the demand frequency may be much lower than the average. However make no mistake - even if they are larger users/customers who may have been fed up with maintaining sites and plugins, they are still WP users.
...
Your approach and attitude reminds me of mine way back. WP ecosystem taught me a lot about the real world, actual business needs, what really matters and changed my entire perspective. Especially interacting with customers/users teaches an engineer like nothing else could. So it will be a maturing journey however you look at it.
Well, we have a lot to disagree on. I’ll find the time to read your comment in detail and comment on some og your points, b/c I find the debate interesting. But I just want to say this right away:
> > We’re not savages. Thats a very crappy way to look at this. The flower shop owner above will not like that kind of perspective. Neither the rest of the WP ecosystem. Such attitude and arrogance is not well-received. Especially keep it away from any support/comment thread at WP.org. You would get very harshly rebuked.
It was a joke and just intended for the quote to add some humor to the post. I’m sorry if it didnt come across like that.
> > We’re not savages. Thats a very crappy way to look at this. The flower shop owner above will not like that kind of perspective. Neither the rest of the WP ecosystem. Such attitude and arrogance is not well-received. Especially keep it away from any support/comment thread at WP.org. You would get very harshly rebuked.
It was a joke and just intended for the quote to add some humor to the post. I’m sorry if it didnt come across like that.
> I’ll find the time to read your comment in detail and comment on some og your points, b/c I find the debate interesting
Do feel free to do so. I've been dealing with this kind of thing (HA + scalability and bringing WP into that realm) for the last ~1.5 years for an important project, so Im pretty loaded on that front.
> It was a joke and just intended for the quote to add some humor to the post. I’m sorry if it didnt come across like that
Gah. Great.
Do feel free to do so. I've been dealing with this kind of thing (HA + scalability and bringing WP into that realm) for the last ~1.5 years for an important project, so Im pretty loaded on that front.
> It was a joke and just intended for the quote to add some humor to the post. I’m sorry if it didnt come across like that
Gah. Great.
I'm going to be working on a personal itch problem. I first spotted the problem about 20 years ago. I solved it as a brute force manual screen scrape 15 and 10 years ago. I tried to solve it programatically 5 years ago, learnt lots but ultimately went round in circles on scaling an approach.
I'm now excited to be playing with Arquero [1] and Uber H3 [2] and hopefully I'll scratch the itch and release something!
[1] https://uwdata.github.io/arquero/ [2] https://github.com/uber/h3-js
I'm now excited to be playing with Arquero [1] and Uber H3 [2] and hopefully I'll scratch the itch and release something!
[1] https://uwdata.github.io/arquero/ [2] https://github.com/uber/h3-js
The first thing I thought of when reading the code for h3 was "I wonder if you could use this to build a Fallout-esque hex layouts for games".
I wonder if the lat/lng to hexes would work well for screen coordinates and the zooming aspect could introduce some interesting UI elements. Purely speculative though, I should probably read the docs in more detail.
I wonder if the lat/lng to hexes would work well for screen coordinates and the zooming aspect could introduce some interesting UI elements. Purely speculative though, I should probably read the docs in more detail.
I will continue to build and improve my comprehensive horse husbandry software: https://horserecords.info
My stock discovery algo[0] averaged 21% daily increase last month and we're launching in a couple of weeks.
Post launch we're going to be working on buying/selling alerts to save people from having to watch charts all day (which I do, but I enjoy it). Also a few more features we're looking at, such as crypto analysis. But with the current bear market, I'm less enthused that it's a worthwhile avenue currently.
0: https://feetr.io
Post launch we're going to be working on buying/selling alerts to save people from having to watch charts all day (which I do, but I enjoy it). Also a few more features we're looking at, such as crypto analysis. But with the current bear market, I'm less enthused that it's a worthwhile avenue currently.
0: https://feetr.io
I'm interested in knowing if you'll have an API at some point. I'd love to integrate this with LogicTrader (https://logictrader.xyz), which is crypto only for now but can be expanded to stocks too.
Yes, absolutely planning an API. It'll most likely come after the alerts. Planned functionality is still an ongoing discussion so people like yourself will be instrumental in those conversations I assume.
Best of luck with the company!
Best of luck with the company!
if you can generate returns in a bear market, then what’s the worry?
Don't get me wrong, I still believe there is money to be made in crypto. Stocks are different in that there is obviously many different industries and therefore many different reasons to get excited, for example Feetr has been into pharma stocks as of late and I speculate that to be the result of Covid increases in China. Crypto is a bit more homogeneous and if people are currently not enthused by the core concept, I don't know that there will be much new money.
However we'll be in a position to capitalise on the next bull market, that's for sure.
However we'll be in a position to capitalise on the next bull market, that's for sure.
A multiplayer dice rolling web/app so that I can roll some Platonic solids/polyhedron dice with my D&D friends at any time. Like during lunch.
I'm sure such a thing already exists but I'm having a go at it anyways. I have an app I use today (that I didn't create) to roll dice but it's just computing an RNG value and displaying that number in text and doesn't support multiple players. I want my creation to be flashier and physics based.
Skills I'm flexing
- technical artist skills with modeling, texturing, and VFX from writing shaders and crafting particles
- UX design from the interfaces and considering types of audio to delight the player
- gameplay programming from defining the simple loose "dice room" sandbox
- multiplayer programming obviously from having everyone connected to a room
- AWS solutions architecting from arranging my cloud resources, driven by terraform
- Linux system administration from providing a service on the internet in a secure way
So it's one of those small things that has enough going on with it for me to chew on for a few weeks to possibly even a few months if I want to support player customization topics. You know, custom dice, custom VFX, and maybe even being able to customize where the numbers actually are on your D*.
Fun stuff.
I'm sure such a thing already exists but I'm having a go at it anyways. I have an app I use today (that I didn't create) to roll dice but it's just computing an RNG value and displaying that number in text and doesn't support multiple players. I want my creation to be flashier and physics based.
Skills I'm flexing
- technical artist skills with modeling, texturing, and VFX from writing shaders and crafting particles
- UX design from the interfaces and considering types of audio to delight the player
- gameplay programming from defining the simple loose "dice room" sandbox
- multiplayer programming obviously from having everyone connected to a room
- AWS solutions architecting from arranging my cloud resources, driven by terraform
- Linux system administration from providing a service on the internet in a secure way
So it's one of those small things that has enough going on with it for me to chew on for a few weeks to possibly even a few months if I want to support player customization topics. You know, custom dice, custom VFX, and maybe even being able to customize where the numbers actually are on your D*.
Fun stuff.
I am working on actually beginning doing something with my photography. It has been a hobby/passion of mine for 7+ years, but so far I do not really do much with the final images. I put them on my private Flickr as a backup and upload the highlights to Instagram, but that's it.
I feel like Instagram is a hard medium because the photos that are trending are mostly the same overdone and oversaturated landscape or travel photos, and while I do take landscape and travel photos myself, I try to not fall into the "bright oversaturated"-look that so many seek.
In the end I guess I want to do more people photography, showcasing cultures etc., but it is a challenge to find good subjects for more serious work rather than just the occasional snapshot. I guess you have to go more all in while traveling and actually travel with the purpose of photography if you want it to become an occupation, rather than just taking pictures along the journey as I do now and not explicitly planning for it.
Has anyone had any experience in this field?
If you want to check out my work I post at https://instagram.com/madscphoto
I feel like Instagram is a hard medium because the photos that are trending are mostly the same overdone and oversaturated landscape or travel photos, and while I do take landscape and travel photos myself, I try to not fall into the "bright oversaturated"-look that so many seek.
In the end I guess I want to do more people photography, showcasing cultures etc., but it is a challenge to find good subjects for more serious work rather than just the occasional snapshot. I guess you have to go more all in while traveling and actually travel with the purpose of photography if you want it to become an occupation, rather than just taking pictures along the journey as I do now and not explicitly planning for it.
Has anyone had any experience in this field?
If you want to check out my work I post at https://instagram.com/madscphoto
I liked your photos on Instagram :) It appears to have a certain identify, with nature, natives, mixing history, and with good composition.
I agree with t0bia_s 2 that you should create a portfolio. But please keep posting your work on Instagram (already following you) or wherever you like. Cheers!
I agree with t0bia_s 2 that you should create a portfolio. But please keep posting your work on Instagram (already following you) or wherever you like. Cheers!
Thank you very much :-). As I wrote to t0bia_s a website is in the works
If you mean it seriously with photography, make a personal portfolio with top notch pictures.
Abandon posting on instagram as soon as possible.
Abandon posting on instagram as soon as possible.
I am actually in the process of creating a website on Squarespace, but the price per month is the only thing holding me back at the moment with no income while traveling :-(
If you pay for Adobe products, you can use their portfolio site. https://portfolio.adobe.com/
Or use WordPress.
Or use WordPress.
At the moment I don't pay for anything from Adobe. WordPress you have to pay for as well, right? At least for the hosting.
I am working on building a portfolio of software solutions for business software, IaC, CICD etc that can be used as reference applications. Then, I'm planning to provide those on a fixed fee basis. Sort of like a software accelerator for certain types of startups or business applications. I suspect I'll build some of this, but I'm also actively looking for published / open resources.
I need to figure out how to find people who might want to buy that. I suspect they are legion, but getting solutions in front of people is sort of the challenge.
I also have legal questions on this topic; for instance if I have copyright of a reference application, and I clone it or paste it into your repo... Can we both have copyright or does the customer only get an unlimited no attribution license?
Etc
I need to figure out how to find people who might want to buy that. I suspect they are legion, but getting solutions in front of people is sort of the challenge.
I also have legal questions on this topic; for instance if I have copyright of a reference application, and I clone it or paste it into your repo... Can we both have copyright or does the customer only get an unlimited no attribution license?
Etc
Quite interested in doing similar as well, feel free to drop me a mail if you're inclined.
Found a job and moved to Spain, so will spend 2023 practicing Spanish and some Catalan.
Job is related to climate change, so will continue mixing workflow managers, climate experiments, HPC, Python, data analytics.
Other than that continue moderating r/functionalprogramming and r/fuzzylogic on reddit, add more Brazilian Portuguese expressions to https://speaklikeabrazilian.com, and try to release Apache Commons Imaging 1.0, and a new version of some old Jenkins plug-ins I haven't managed to find someone to adopt them.
If I find time will probably try to learn some more Prolog and reasoners with SPARQL/RDF/Jena...
Job is related to climate change, so will continue mixing workflow managers, climate experiments, HPC, Python, data analytics.
Other than that continue moderating r/functionalprogramming and r/fuzzylogic on reddit, add more Brazilian Portuguese expressions to https://speaklikeabrazilian.com, and try to release Apache Commons Imaging 1.0, and a new version of some old Jenkins plug-ins I haven't managed to find someone to adopt them.
If I find time will probably try to learn some more Prolog and reasoners with SPARQL/RDF/Jena...
I'm a developer for the OSS Serratus project, https://www.serrartus.io where we have a web-portal used to explore where RNA viruses show up in public sequencing datasets (we've analyzed ~21 petabytes of sequencing data to make this dataset).
There's lots of rich meta-data associated with these RNA sequencing datasets, so what I'm trying to do is create meaningful meta-data aggregation and associate them with different types of viruses to make a sort of procedural generated encyclopedia of RNA viruses. Be less biased by what scientists expect to see, and focus more on what is actually observed for virus biology and epidemiology. I've built a little proof of concept called `palmID` (www.serratus.io/palmid) but I think there's lots more to be done to make this really shine.
Same as last year: http://golfcourse.wiki
Launched last year to a really supportive subreddit. Currently working on a very light weight way to use the existing data in the wiki to operate tournaments for clubs on the very cheap (the entire point of the site is to support blue-collar/municipal clubs), which should incentivize adoption with the exact audience I'm targeting.
Have recently created some instructional videos for golfers unfamiliar with .svg graphics, to be able to map their own course in an editable way, with an extremely light weight filetype: https://www.youtube.com/@golfcoursewiki2140
Do need to work on differentiating image blobs vs svg and improve blob storage, but I'm quite happy with where I'm at.
Launched last year to a really supportive subreddit. Currently working on a very light weight way to use the existing data in the wiki to operate tournaments for clubs on the very cheap (the entire point of the site is to support blue-collar/municipal clubs), which should incentivize adoption with the exact audience I'm targeting.
Have recently created some instructional videos for golfers unfamiliar with .svg graphics, to be able to map their own course in an editable way, with an extremely light weight filetype: https://www.youtube.com/@golfcoursewiki2140
Do need to work on differentiating image blobs vs svg and improve blob storage, but I'm quite happy with where I'm at.
The last few years, I've generally been working on video game and UI stuff with Rust. Recently, and for the foreseeable future, I've transitioned from working on my own stuff, to contributing to the Bevy[0] game engine, on the rendering side of things. Temporal antialiasing, screen space ambient occlusion, bloom, image based lighting, etc. It's been very rewarding working on an established project, rather than my own stuff.
[0]: https://bevyengine.org
[0]: https://bevyengine.org
working on a few things focused on africa. i have a fundamental belief that much, if not all, of africa’s problems stem from the people not knowing better. you could say i’m firmly in the school of ‘reasonable people act reasonably’ and you don’t be so wrong. not completely right, but not completely wrong either. i’m african myself (ghanaian to be precise) with all my family still residing in my country, and i worry a lot that they will never enjoy a higher quality of life. that’s why i’m dedicating myself to building systems for producing and sharing knowledge. i started a community for developers almost 10 years ago (https://devcongress.org) which, while ~5k members strong, has failed on the most important metric: put ghana on the map of global software engineering. there’s been a few wins here and there but nothing to write home about. so, I’ve started https://toprank.devcongress.org to be a little bit more hands-on in the nurturing of the next generation of software engineers. in my private endeavor, i’m working on a finance product focused mainly on making the average african financially intelligent. we’d like them to invest more, spend less, perceive their financial history in novel and informative ways. it’s exciting work, and we’ll be applying to yc later this year. talking about africa gets me rambling (because they’re a large-ish surface area) so i’ll stop here. if africa or the developing world is on your mind too, feel free to hit me up at wheresyaw@gmail
How far guy, hw you dey?
I want to pivot my career to teaching. I get a lot of satisfaction (and ego boost!) from it but language was a big obstacle for me. I was very aware of my English and it was very frustrating how I can express myself in native language but I mumble in English. Last year I switched my surroundings from native speakers to people like me - with English as second language. It was a great confidence boost. I was mentoring people in DataViz Society and have two lectures about visualization. Now I’m preparing my course about creating data visualization on the web. I can do this on my company time so I’m free from thinking about profits and marketing - I want to run this for free. In the end it is aimed mostly at folks who change careers to programming without company learning budgets.
Updating my mobile game! Helping my wife grow our first baby! Trying to overall be a better human!
Cheers hackernews I hope you're all able accomplish your wildest dreams this year or in the years to come .
Cheers hackernews I hope you're all able accomplish your wildest dreams this year or in the years to come .
Will continue development of my 3D Common Lisp system: https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9
Brief trailer: https://youtu.be/i0CwhEDAXB0
Brief trailer: https://youtu.be/i0CwhEDAXB0
I'm trying to do something musical every day, doesn't matter what it is. Two days down. So far I've just been sitting at the piano playing through lead sheets of songs I've written and some jazz standards.
Happy Jamuary! I think this is so great! I'm trying to do produce a musical artifact each day this month. I'm hoping it helps with my bad habit of never finishing songs :)
Then you can keep going through February https://www.rpmchallenge.com/
Working on making big geospatial data (from sources like NASA, ECMWF) really easy to work with through a simple API that integrates with common tools in python/R. Would love to help ppl focus on answering really interesting questions (e.g. impacts of climate change, energy load forecasting, food security), without needing to be experts in geospatial data engineering! https://www.pharossoftware.com/
Sounds interesting! I work with these data, is any of that going to be Open Source or commercial only?
Hey, thanks! The data we connect to is open-source but the ETL and connectors itself (which is the actual service) is not. In the future, there are a few things we'd love to release as open-source packages, but we're just not there yet.
What kind of data/sources do you work with mainly? Would love to learn more
What kind of data/sources do you work with mainly? Would love to learn more
Cool!
I've spend many years in Growth engineering. We often get asked to build this banner or that modal. I've always felt there should be a Wix kind of experience, but for smaller components. I didn't find one so I decided to build it.(bannerbox.io).
Bannerbox is targeted at existing site owners, specifically non-technical people (i.e. Marketing).
I do all of the design and coding myself (both backend and frontend in Typescript). I've been building this on the side and it's been a slog. I'm nearing feature complete and aim to start marketing the product this year.
It's currently costing me ~$50/month in hosting fees and generating 0 in revenue.
Bannerbox is targeted at existing site owners, specifically non-technical people (i.e. Marketing).
I do all of the design and coding myself (both backend and frontend in Typescript). I've been building this on the side and it's been a slog. I'm nearing feature complete and aim to start marketing the product this year.
It's currently costing me ~$50/month in hosting fees and generating 0 in revenue.
A blog about aircraft ice protection technology in the years 1919 to 1958, the era of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (a predecessor to NASA).
https://icinganalysis.github.io/index.html
https://icinganalysis.github.io/index.html
Might have to have a read of that - reportedly my grandfather worked on antifreeze solutions at the NPL in London during WWII. Be interesting to see if any of his work is referenced.
I was just accepted in to carbonthirteen.com, an accelerator dedicated to people who want to meaningfully reduce emissions. I applied for my project, gaffologist.com, which makes it easier to find homes where you can walk, bike, and take public transport for your daily needs (Ireland-only for the moment).
However, I also have a day job that I like which pays well, and I'm not sure whether I'll proceed.
However, I also have a day job that I like which pays well, and I'm not sure whether I'll proceed.
Working on Booklet (https://booklet.community), which is my attempt at replacing noisy chat products like Slack and Discord with a calm, real-time, high-polish forum.
Building a treehouse for my kids. Turns out that (like most things) treehouse construction can be a very deep rabbit hole.
I'm still working on https://pagespace.app/. The vision is Github but for books with built in subscription and sale incentives for an author to continuously update a book to make it a lifelong project.
The other idea I want to work on is longevity as a service, helping folks track health metrics that have been reliably shown to affect life expectancy. Things like hormones, cholesterol (apoB, lp(A)), inflammation...
The other idea I want to work on is longevity as a service, helping folks track health metrics that have been reliably shown to affect life expectancy. Things like hormones, cholesterol (apoB, lp(A)), inflammation...
Besides day job (which I am excited about), I've been working on honing my zen buddhist woodworking skills this past year and taking on more complex projects.
This is a torii gate that has been in progress for a while: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm7LNGRP8-r/?hl=en and I plan to finish it this year (painting + gilding + carving)
This is a torii gate that has been in progress for a while: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm7LNGRP8-r/?hl=en and I plan to finish it this year (painting + gilding + carving)
>This is a torii gate that has been in progress for a while: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm7LNGRP8-r/?hl=en and I plan to finish it this year (painting + gilding + carving)
Looks awesome! Where you find the patterns for your carvings? From existing patterns, or did you write some sort of generative art algorithms to create them?
Looks awesome! Where you find the patterns for your carvings? From existing patterns, or did you write some sort of generative art algorithms to create them?
I draw and carve by hand - I don't like to use power tools (except drills).
I want to build a digital / smart foosball table with features like
* automated goal detection
* trigger things like lighten up the field on specific events (e.g. a goal)
* build a league backend / frontend and player management
* allow players to "login" via NFC on the table itself
There are a lot of ideas and questions right now. I pitched the idea to my employer to make it a continous "hackathon" for the employees. If that gets rejected I have at least one colleague that wants to build it in private.
Of course the idea is to make at least the software stack open-source (and give instructions on the integrated / used HW) but before that there is a lot to think about regarding the architecture ("offline" only? connect to a "cloud" component for league management outside of the office?).
* automated goal detection
* trigger things like lighten up the field on specific events (e.g. a goal)
* build a league backend / frontend and player management
* allow players to "login" via NFC on the table itself
There are a lot of ideas and questions right now. I pitched the idea to my employer to make it a continous "hackathon" for the employees. If that gets rejected I have at least one colleague that wants to build it in private.
Of course the idea is to make at least the software stack open-source (and give instructions on the integrated / used HW) but before that there is a lot to think about regarding the architecture ("offline" only? connect to a "cloud" component for league management outside of the office?).
That would be awesome. I once developed an PWA called the FoosTracker. It's still up (not sure if it's fully functional): https://myfoostracker.firebaseapp.com. It allowed combination of players to form teams and challenge other teams. It used a kahoot-like system for setting up matches. It did a bunch of statistics. About building your table: Remember that playability is king. Consider buying a great table and modifying it (as little as possible) instead of building it yourself from scratch.
Unfortunately the linked UI is in an endless loop on my side and won't open :/ Yup the plan was to buy a (used) table which can also be disassembled to take a look inside and place the sensors where they need to be :) Fortunately they are not that pricey.
Maybe with computer vision it could be a simple app on a phone and work for any table (after some calibration)?
Yup already thought about that but IMO it's much more work and prone to errors compared to just installing some sensors. Want to get that running ASAP and after that we can look into CV options. Already found a project [0] that tried to accomplish that with OpenCV but it seems it's abandoned.
[0] https://github.com/StudentCV/TableSoccerCV
[0] https://github.com/StudentCV/TableSoccerCV
If you can track the ball reliably like the guy from Stuff Made Here does on some of his projects it would maybe be a first step? Anyway this sounds like a super fun project! Good luck!
I plan to work more on API Bakery [0], my project generator service.
The thing works but looks and feels barebones, and I also need to focus more on marketing (which, as a techie, is a thing I avoid the most).
I also plan to get more hands-on experience with the current state of the art AI - probably more prompt-engineering level than pytorch level, but I do like to dive in so who knows.
[0] https://apibakery.com
The thing works but looks and feels barebones, and I also need to focus more on marketing (which, as a techie, is a thing I avoid the most).
I also plan to get more hands-on experience with the current state of the art AI - probably more prompt-engineering level than pytorch level, but I do like to dive in so who knows.
[0] https://apibakery.com
The first version of my radiation detector is being sent to people all over the world and I've gotten very good feedback. Now I need to make a second version with Bluetooth and gamma spectroscopy. And a longer battery life. And higher max range. And higher sensitivity. And a bigger screen, probably. https://www.bettergeiger.com
Looks great and I see it has a lot of positive reviews. Out of curiosity, since this is a a high-stakes equipment since it's used for safety, did you have to get a certification of any kind to sell it commercially? I also see you ship test material. Have you compared readings with other industrial counters and gathered data on your detectors accuracy, scale and error margins?
Which sensor did you go with?
Everything I am working on is mostly physical or mental health related this year. My only career specific goal is to keep the job I have throughout the recession, continue doing personal labs and exercises of anything new and interesting that may come out in the future.
Building a tool for running secure enclaves called Enclaver (https://github.com/edgebitio/enclaver). There is a big opportunity for keeping data encrypted while running code against it within enclaves.
And a more secure software supply chain is possible with device attestation and cryptographic measurements of software.
And a more secure software supply chain is possible with device attestation and cryptographic measurements of software.
For work: flexible artificial muscle actuators for use in prosthetics.
For personal use: a workout app that automatically plays high energy music during a workout set and downbeat music while resting between sets. The right music really helps me workout more effectively.
For personal use: a workout app that automatically plays high energy music during a workout set and downbeat music while resting between sets. The right music really helps me workout more effectively.
Would love to hear more about the work item... (and interval training with matched music is a great idea!)
In the current stage of our transition to renewables, the "greenness" of our electricity varies wildly throughout the day. I'm building a ML system to predict the next 7 days of "greenness" (and electricity price) in the hope that folks can reduce their carbon footprint, for example by:
- choosing a 'green' time of day to charge an EV
- 'overdrive' heating/cooling during times of high greenness, reducing usage during
- dream: a large scale user could take greenness into account when scheduling
- dream: the nightly weather report includes a green forecast
Feedback on idea/execution greatly appreciated!
http://greenforecast.au
- choosing a 'green' time of day to charge an EV
- 'overdrive' heating/cooling during times of high greenness, reducing usage during
- dream: a large scale user could take greenness into account when scheduling
- dream: the nightly weather report includes a green forecast
Feedback on idea/execution greatly appreciated!
http://greenforecast.au
Im a long time lurker but first time poster. One of my resolutions for this year is to engage more with likeminded people and to build useful product for small-medium sized businesses to help them keep their infrastructure secure.
It’s a webapp written in Django which lets customers perform scans on their machines to help them get a better view on which ports are open, which machines are reachable etc.
I’m planning on adding more features as time goes on but I’m focused on building a MVP for now. 3 days in and I’m loving it so far - I’m new to Python (and programming in general, really) so it’s a great learning exercise either way. I’m hoping to monetise it as SaaS.
It’s a webapp written in Django which lets customers perform scans on their machines to help them get a better view on which ports are open, which machines are reachable etc.
I’m planning on adding more features as time goes on but I’m focused on building a MVP for now. 3 days in and I’m loving it so far - I’m new to Python (and programming in general, really) so it’s a great learning exercise either way. I’m hoping to monetise it as SaaS.
I’m currently writing my Zettelkasten workbook to consolidate everything I’ve taught on it on YouTube:
https://atomicnotetaking.com/
Then back to building my Zettelkasten inspired note-taking app Flowtelic:
https://youtu.be/XLAJW7K6CU0
https://atomicnotetaking.com/
Then back to building my Zettelkasten inspired note-taking app Flowtelic:
https://youtu.be/XLAJW7K6CU0
I'm hosting one dinner party per month at my place
I'm going to piggyback on this, as my wife and I were just talking about making Fridays "Pizza Night" at our house. We love cooking together, and we've got a long-running-but-stale love of making sourdough pizza from scratch and doing it all up with the kids. It's intense, but scales reasonably as long as you get a head-count a few days out. We're so looking forward to sitting down with friends around our table again.
That's actually a great idea, the lack of effort spent in keeping friends is an underestimated issues, at least in many western cities...
Love this. What inspired you to do so? Do you cook or is it like a potluck?
It started as a thing around BBQ as I have a small indoor infrared grill (all my friends have small places too).
Will also do other stuff like Mexican chili, bring your own steak and grill it etc. People bring drinks and snacks or dishes.
What inspired me.. My friend used to do it a few years back and somehow I realized it let's me become a social hub, have people invite their friends so I keep in touch with and make new friends.
Will also do other stuff like Mexican chili, bring your own steak and grill it etc. People bring drinks and snacks or dishes.
What inspired me.. My friend used to do it a few years back and somehow I realized it let's me become a social hub, have people invite their friends so I keep in touch with and make new friends.
Callstacking - a better debugger for Ruby on Rails.
Records all application level method calls within your app, along with their important context.
Visual nesting of the method calls allows you to easily see which methods call which.
Request params, method argument values, method return values, local variable values, all are recorded.
https://callstacking.com/
You no longer need to debug with binding.pry or puts statements, as the entire callstack for a given request is captured.
Any new engineer joining your team can quickly understand what are the important calls/views for any given request.
Teammates can comment on changes to your call chain.
Records all application level method calls within your app, along with their important context.
Visual nesting of the method calls allows you to easily see which methods call which.
Request params, method argument values, method return values, local variable values, all are recorded.
https://callstacking.com/
You no longer need to debug with binding.pry or puts statements, as the entire callstack for a given request is captured.
Any new engineer joining your team can quickly understand what are the important calls/views for any given request.
Teammates can comment on changes to your call chain.
For the start of 2023, I will be continuing my ongoing work on Exhibitor - a React component workshop. The aim is "think Storybook but leaner, faster, simpler, and with sane defaults". Been one month so far (in-between my existing goings-on) and it's been a very promising and exciting time so far. It's still early days, but it's turning into a really delightful tool to use.
Latest update over on my blog: https://samhuk.substack.com/p/exhibitor-update-3-v200
Latest update over on my blog: https://samhuk.substack.com/p/exhibitor-update-3-v200
[deleted]
After covid hit I stopped running the Candy Japan subscription box and moved on to making games on Roblox. I’ve had a good start with it, and want to keep improving and releasing more games.
Perhaps I’ll also try some other platforms/side projects as well to avoid getting too stuck on just one platform.
Perhaps I’ll also try some other platforms/side projects as well to avoid getting too stuck on just one platform.
Sorry to hear Candy Japan shut down. Can you share how profitable roblox games are?
Although Roblox takes about a 75% cut (to cover their Apple/Google Play fees, servers, and leaving some for profit), it’s still going a bit better than Candy Japan did.
With CJ I kept even less (I think it was somewhere around 10-20%) of revenue after all the goods, shipping, packaging, marketing costs.
I’m also enjoying it much more. It’s less repetitive, as with gamedev you can challenge yourself as much as you want to. I no longer have support email to respond to. And I don’t have to do icky promotional stuff as the Roblox algorithm sends you traffic as long as your game has good metrics (similar to YouTube).
With CJ I kept even less (I think it was somewhere around 10-20%) of revenue after all the goods, shipping, packaging, marketing costs.
I’m also enjoying it much more. It’s less repetitive, as with gamedev you can challenge yourself as much as you want to. I no longer have support email to respond to. And I don’t have to do icky promotional stuff as the Roblox algorithm sends you traffic as long as your game has good metrics (similar to YouTube).
I'm building an open-source[1] alternative to qr-code-generator (Bitly), called RoQR[2]. The goal is to provide advertisers with analytics for the scans of their QR codes while still being as privacy-respecting as possible to the scanners of the codes - sort of like a Plausible.io for QR codes.
[1]: https://github.com/roqr/roqr [2]: https://roqr.app
[1]: https://github.com/roqr/roqr [2]: https://roqr.app
I just accepted a new job offer as a senior engineer so this year I’m working on leveling up my career and raw coding skills as well as my management and leadership skills. Remote work has been a challenge for me and so I’m trying to combat that more effectively in 2023.
At the moment a lot of planes are bought and sold through facebook groups and the sites that exist are either brokerages charging a % or very old school/poor UX. I'm working on my own marketplace with the key info available and a better UX (maps to find planes at airports near you) etc. Monetization ideas, if it ever goes that far, would be simple sponsored planes higher on the search page like your normal recruitment jobs site.
A FLOSS, offline-first spaced repetition system that has first class support for collaboration, curation, and plugins. It's Reddit for flashcards.
https://github.com/AlexErrant/Pentive
I've been thinking about this for a stupid amount of time... thinking that someday someone's going to improve on Anki. Finally got tired of it and said that person's me.
https://github.com/AlexErrant/Pentive
I've been thinking about this for a stupid amount of time... thinking that someday someone's going to improve on Anki. Finally got tired of it and said that person's me.
Working on my startup for Charging and Routing optimization for EVs in Fleet. https://www.makemydayapp.com
My own self-discipline, and being satisfied with my current lot in life.
Looking at the past few years, my project list has only grown, as I repeat the cycle of getting excited about a new idea, starting to work on it, reaching a snag and getting frustrated at the lack of progress, only to get excited about a new idea and repeat the cycle.
This year I intend to focus a little more about being generally disciplined about all the little daily things, and just being grateful for what I do have today.
My hope is that improved discipline will make sticking to one project easier, and being more content generally will help make the stakes of finishing projects feel less daunting.
And because I recognize this answer isn't totally in the spirit of the question -- I'm also working on building a personal blog site with Elixir/Phoenix/LiveView/Tailwind. I really like the programming model of these tools and how easy it is to build a scalable distributed app with Fly.io, and think building some mastery in these tools will be valuable in the long-run.
Looking at the past few years, my project list has only grown, as I repeat the cycle of getting excited about a new idea, starting to work on it, reaching a snag and getting frustrated at the lack of progress, only to get excited about a new idea and repeat the cycle.
This year I intend to focus a little more about being generally disciplined about all the little daily things, and just being grateful for what I do have today.
My hope is that improved discipline will make sticking to one project easier, and being more content generally will help make the stakes of finishing projects feel less daunting.
And because I recognize this answer isn't totally in the spirit of the question -- I'm also working on building a personal blog site with Elixir/Phoenix/LiveView/Tailwind. I really like the programming model of these tools and how easy it is to build a scalable distributed app with Fly.io, and think building some mastery in these tools will be valuable in the long-run.
I'm extremely bullish on Large Language Models (e.g., GPT-3, ChatGPT) and Stable Diffusion (e.g., DALL-E).
This year, I will use them to double my productivity at work. I also plan to integrate them to my life management framework.
This year, I will use them to double my productivity at work. I also plan to integrate them to my life management framework.
Beginning two long endeavors this year.
1. Becoming UltraStrong. A concept I made-up to test myself. Compete and not zero any events in an open strongman event on a Saturday, then complete a 50 miler (ultra marathon) on a Sunday. I did ultras in my 20s and competed in two strongman competitions last year.
2. Reading and writing an essay on all the books in my library; roughly 300 books.
Posted on another thread.
2. Reading and writing an essay on all the books in my library; roughly 300 books.
Posted on another thread.
Gotta say, I absolutely love the UltraStrong concept. Are you being particularly selective about the strongman events you're entering? I've come across a few that have one or two events where even the opening weight/implement might cause issues for anyone trying to run the next day, let alone run an ultramarathon.
Thanks! My only requirement is they have a stone event. I don't like them but when people think strongman they think atlas stones. Also needs to be in the open category; I can enter the masters division in 2.5 years but I feel that would be cheating as the weights are significantly less. I believe I have ~7 years to complete (45) this goal as age will become a factor in doing both at once.
I want to disrupt the toaster industry.
For way too long I've been getting inconsistently toasted toast out of my toaster. My idea is to introduce cameras into the toaster that are used to recognize when the perfect amount of toasting has been applied. It is a way better approach than just using a timer. I have a few problems to solve...
For way too long I've been getting inconsistently toasted toast out of my toaster. My idea is to introduce cameras into the toaster that are used to recognize when the perfect amount of toasting has been applied. It is a way better approach than just using a timer. I have a few problems to solve...
I'd recommend you have a read about the "Sunbeam Radiant Toaster" first released in 1948 [0]!
> When you stick a piece of bread into this toaster, it pushes down a series of cleverly designed levers that have just enough tension to lower and raise two slices all by themselves — and it’s got a mechanical thermostat inside that stops your bread toasting when it’s toasted and ready, NOT after some arbitrary amount of time.
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/22801890/sunbeam-radiant-control-to...
> When you stick a piece of bread into this toaster, it pushes down a series of cleverly designed levers that have just enough tension to lower and raise two slices all by themselves — and it’s got a mechanical thermostat inside that stops your bread toasting when it’s toasted and ready, NOT after some arbitrary amount of time.
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/22801890/sunbeam-radiant-control-to...
This looks amazing, I'll have to get my hands on one! Thank you
Hey, I'm interested in toaster industry disruption, but more from the angle of making something that is just well built and will last. This is currently below the threshold of "I'm going to do something about it", but if you need someone to bounce ideas off, hit me up!
There must be a strong correlation between the surface temperature of the bread, the time it stays at that temp, and the level of toasting?
Maybe an infrared thermostat that would report the surface temperature of the bread would work?
Maybe an infrared thermostat that would report the surface temperature of the bread would work?
Yes for sure, although I am interested in using something like OpenCV along with some feedback mechanism to turn the individual wires of the element up or down depending on the progress. Surface temperature would be a good average but that may not give toast that's consistently toasted to the same amount across its surface.
I’ll be finishing my Synth (VST) I’m writing while learning Rust. Started years ago but was delayed by life and by “areweguiyet?”. But now it’s very nearly done.
Narrator: it will never be done.
Narrator: it will never be done.
I'm working on two projects this year.
First is a routine/task management app designed for people with inattentive ADHD. The goal is develop automated strategies that catch and counter the tendency for such tools to spontaneously turn "invisible" to the audience, whereupon they lose progress and time until they find a new strategy or reconnect.
Second is publishing a fiction serial via a self-hosted Ghost instance using a custom theme. The v0.1 of this is about to launch. I've been pottering towards this since lockdown. The goals for this project are two fold - try and build a web-based reading experience that is low friction and enjoyable (probably on top of epub.js), and test my theory that the internet is big enough such that there is an audience that will support any creative work as long as they can find it.
First is a routine/task management app designed for people with inattentive ADHD. The goal is develop automated strategies that catch and counter the tendency for such tools to spontaneously turn "invisible" to the audience, whereupon they lose progress and time until they find a new strategy or reconnect.
Second is publishing a fiction serial via a self-hosted Ghost instance using a custom theme. The v0.1 of this is about to launch. I've been pottering towards this since lockdown. The goals for this project are two fold - try and build a web-based reading experience that is low friction and enjoyable (probably on top of epub.js), and test my theory that the internet is big enough such that there is an audience that will support any creative work as long as they can find it.
I am interested in both these things. Can you tell me where I might find out more about both of them? Thank you.
Have you made any progress on the ADHD tool?
I'm working on a video game. It's pretty hobbyist but maybe it will teach a couple of mates of mine who can't program yet a little. They could use it.
An AI language teacher you can talk to (Mandarin Chinese only, to begin with).
https://polyvox.app
I'm betting there will be few of these popping up, mostly based on ChatGPT/Whisper. I'm a bit more loose with the "AI" angle, because I'm taking a slightly different tack (after a lot of development and experimentation work):
1) I'm incorporating actual lessons, rather than open-ended/free-for-all conversations.
2) I wanted to interact with an actual avatar, not just a textbox.
3) ChatGPT makes mistakes (sometimes, really bad ones - grammatical, vocabulary, you name it). I'm vetting all lessons/content to make sure it's accurate.
4) Everything on-device, no APIs and no remote hosting. If you buy it, it's yours forever.
https://polyvox.app
I'm betting there will be few of these popping up, mostly based on ChatGPT/Whisper. I'm a bit more loose with the "AI" angle, because I'm taking a slightly different tack (after a lot of development and experimentation work):
1) I'm incorporating actual lessons, rather than open-ended/free-for-all conversations.
2) I wanted to interact with an actual avatar, not just a textbox.
3) ChatGPT makes mistakes (sometimes, really bad ones - grammatical, vocabulary, you name it). I'm vetting all lessons/content to make sure it's accurate.
4) Everything on-device, no APIs and no remote hosting. If you buy it, it's yours forever.
Not at a stage where I can talk about it in detail, but I'm building a custom filesystem in FUSE. I just got the first basic getattr() working today. :)
Last year I was thinking about a FUSE filesystem that would help keep downloads directory more organized. But I think that maybe using fanotify or inotify could work better for it. Probably there exist something like it.
Other FS I had in mind that could be tied to the first idea is a naive online deduplication layer. This could help keeping Yocto build directories size under control.
Other idea (that would be useless for Yocto but useful for private files) is to add redundancy in terms of par2 files being created online.
I know that most of those ideas could be better served by more sophisticated filesystems, but I think on one side you can't always choose the filesystem you can use and on the other hand for archiving purposes the simplest things could be the best.
Other FS I had in mind that could be tied to the first idea is a naive online deduplication layer. This could help keeping Yocto build directories size under control.
Other idea (that would be useless for Yocto but useful for private files) is to add redundancy in terms of par2 files being created online.
I know that most of those ideas could be better served by more sophisticated filesystems, but I think on one side you can't always choose the filesystem you can use and on the other hand for archiving purposes the simplest things could be the best.
Finding a large, long-term project that’s just mine.
Maybe code, maybe writing, maybe organizational.
But something that in 10 years time will look like a significant, positive investment.
Maybe code, maybe writing, maybe organizational.
But something that in 10 years time will look like a significant, positive investment.
I'm continuing to work on https://github.com/zbm-dev/zfsbootmenu . Support for Debian's initramfs-tools, more install guides for distributions, better documentation.
I'm constantly chipping away at Zigpoll (https://www.zigpoll.com).
Flexible surveys are an incredibly broad challenge both from the client side and the analytics/dashboard side. Since it's by nature solving long tail problems the level of complexity is such that you have to have several different user paths which "just work" under the same umbrella. And entering into different markets ensures a constant flow of new features to roadmap. I am focused on e-commerce currently but it could continue to branch out into multiple sectors given enough polish and tighter integrations with relevant third party providers.
Flexible surveys are an incredibly broad challenge both from the client side and the analytics/dashboard side. Since it's by nature solving long tail problems the level of complexity is such that you have to have several different user paths which "just work" under the same umbrella. And entering into different markets ensures a constant flow of new features to roadmap. I am focused on e-commerce currently but it could continue to branch out into multiple sectors given enough polish and tighter integrations with relevant third party providers.
Overall theme: Improving my language skills. My hypothesis is that language is the closest we have to a (lossy) codec for thought. By becoming more cognizant of higher-level concepts and the differences between them, we can reason more effectively and improve our thought and communication processes.
1. Get back into the habit of writing and reviewing evergreen notes (https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes, An Executable Strategy for Writing: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z3PBVkZ2SvsAgFXkjHsycBeyS6Cw...) and refining my Zettelkasten knowledgebase and perhaps making it publicly available at some point.
2. Continue refining the precision of my vocabulary and my understanding of the etymology of words. I've realized that I only have a fuzzy grasp of many of the words I use on an everyday basis, yet by becoming more aware of the nuances and subtleties of the usage, origin, and connotations of different terms, I will be able to express myself more accurately and also perhaps better be able to read between the lines of what others say and write.
For example, consider the following definitions:
Compound: composed of two or more separate elements; a mixture.
Complex: consisting of many different and connected parts.
Consequently, a set of buildings which share the same property but are unconnected (for example a mobile home community, or standalone military barracks buildings) should be referred to as a compound. In contrast, if the structure has bridges between the different parts, it should be called a complex.
Also consider:
Sophisticated: (of a machine, system, or technique) developed to a high degree of complexity.
Complicated: consisting of many interconnecting parts or elements, often involving many different and confusing aspects
(from Latin complicat- "folded together", from the verb complicare, from com- "together" + plicare "to fold")
An automobile is a very complex machine, since it consists of thousands of parts and systems. To a mechanic, it might be complicated (as reflected by manuals which are hundreds or thousands of pages long and hours of frustration), while to a user it is sophisticated - capable of doing many things, and yet still easy to use, since the complexity is abstracted away.
These 4 words are seemingly very closely related, yet through careful word selection, we can use them to communicate very different ideas and emotions.
1. Get back into the habit of writing and reviewing evergreen notes (https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes, An Executable Strategy for Writing: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z3PBVkZ2SvsAgFXkjHsycBeyS6Cw...) and refining my Zettelkasten knowledgebase and perhaps making it publicly available at some point.
2. Continue refining the precision of my vocabulary and my understanding of the etymology of words. I've realized that I only have a fuzzy grasp of many of the words I use on an everyday basis, yet by becoming more aware of the nuances and subtleties of the usage, origin, and connotations of different terms, I will be able to express myself more accurately and also perhaps better be able to read between the lines of what others say and write.
For example, consider the following definitions:
Compound: composed of two or more separate elements; a mixture.
Complex: consisting of many different and connected parts.
Consequently, a set of buildings which share the same property but are unconnected (for example a mobile home community, or standalone military barracks buildings) should be referred to as a compound. In contrast, if the structure has bridges between the different parts, it should be called a complex.
Also consider:
Sophisticated: (of a machine, system, or technique) developed to a high degree of complexity.
Complicated: consisting of many interconnecting parts or elements, often involving many different and confusing aspects
(from Latin complicat- "folded together", from the verb complicare, from com- "together" + plicare "to fold")
An automobile is a very complex machine, since it consists of thousands of parts and systems. To a mechanic, it might be complicated (as reflected by manuals which are hundreds or thousands of pages long and hours of frustration), while to a user it is sophisticated - capable of doing many things, and yet still easy to use, since the complexity is abstracted away.
These 4 words are seemingly very closely related, yet through careful word selection, we can use them to communicate very different ideas and emotions.
Sophisticated has a Greek root, like sophistry or Sophia, sophomoric, philosophy, etc., σοφος, meaning wise.
Looking it up, it seems like that Greek root acquired a few different meanings or connotations in Late Latin.
Looking it up, it seems like that Greek root acquired a few different meanings or connotations in Late Latin.
I would like to propose a mobile voting platform for the annual parade in my village in September. It's still work in progress, but it's seems that the organizers are interested.
And also learning two very promising technologies like eBPF and Zig.
And also learning two very promising technologies like eBPF and Zig.
I am pitching my friend who just had a wonderfully successful exit to invest in my hotel abroad. It’s a super country with a big tourism economy and inexpensive labor. I have a local friend who knows the business, fingers crossed.
I want to leave tech.
I want to leave tech.
What country? How much do you anticipate needing to start it? Do you have experience in hospitality?
Turkey. On the coast in a small resort town. 200k per key with 15 rooms.
I have no prior experience but what I do have is a business plan and a local partner. I’m networking with people who are in hospitality and working with a consultant to assist with due diligence. I’m moving there to supervise operations.
I have no prior experience but what I do have is a business plan and a local partner. I’m networking with people who are in hospitality and working with a consultant to assist with due diligence. I’m moving there to supervise operations.
[deleted]
Im currently trying to finish my Raspberry Pi powered RC car, that uses a Pi on the car and as the remote, with Remote GPIO to connect them. Currently stuck on a bug where the Pis connect but the controlled Pi doesnt execute the commands it gets.. Otherwise its all wrapped up, including a custom PCB on the car for controlling the two motors and steering servo.
Once this is done, Im going to start work on a custom model BART train+track. Goal is to have it running with a live third rail, and then long term add some code for controlling the train coming into "stations"
Also get a job at a tech company in the fall...
Once this is done, Im going to start work on a custom model BART train+track. Goal is to have it running with a live third rail, and then long term add some code for controlling the train coming into "stations"
Also get a job at a tech company in the fall...
I'm working on upgrading Pyalgoviz [1] to use Python 3 and run using Pyodide so it doesn't depend on the server. It's been kind of slow going since I'm unfamiliar with some of the technologies involved, but I am really looking forward to releasing it and seeing what people think. Repo (still very much a WIP): https://github.com/stephen-h-d/pyalgoviz
1. https://pyalgoviz.appspot.com/
1. https://pyalgoviz.appspot.com/
Nothing that'll move the ground, I'm sure. I'm about 15 years behind on Python - learning it to extend Ansible.
There are quite a few modules I'd like to see... and smarter bridges for inventory management
There are quite a few modules I'd like to see... and smarter bridges for inventory management
I'm working on INET256, an API for secure identity based networking. The reference implementation, mesh256 is a mesh network using a distributed routing algorithm. There is also diet256, which is a centrally coordinated network with direct connections using QUIC over The Internet.
https://github.com/inet256/inet256
https://github.com/inet256/diet256
https://github.com/inet256/inet256
https://github.com/inet256/diet256
I don't know what groceries to order for food delivery.
I "just" want the healthy-ish person's food list with deep links into grocery apps (Instacart, Walmart, Amazon, etc) and autopopulate it. No different than how I can follow people's song choices on Spotify. What did you last order, I want to order it too. Publicly broadcast, public, private, all optional.
There are tons of apps for "sharing grocery lists", but between a tiny group of people or roommates. And one or two that will let you take a single recipe and get the ingredients into one grocery delivery service ("Tasty" recipe to Walmart, for example). They all require you knowing what you want already, and I don't know. I want to change my diet to different food, I'm fine not learning how to do that.
I think this problem is overlooked, and frankly invalidated. I don't want to be a recipe enthusiast and I don't care that other people enjoy running around a grocery store in fetch quests as half of the fun in cooking, or that other people don't like how the food delivery person chose the wrong fruit. These aren't important issues to me, and I think there are lots of people like me, although I haven't bothered to quantify this!
So that's decent alpha because I think a lot of people are in similar boats and with this kind of data you could totally elevate a single product for mass purchasing when everyone is buying the same ingredient over food delivery. People that are already fine paying hidden premiums for food delivery.
I "just" want the healthy-ish person's food list with deep links into grocery apps (Instacart, Walmart, Amazon, etc) and autopopulate it. No different than how I can follow people's song choices on Spotify. What did you last order, I want to order it too. Publicly broadcast, public, private, all optional.
There are tons of apps for "sharing grocery lists", but between a tiny group of people or roommates. And one or two that will let you take a single recipe and get the ingredients into one grocery delivery service ("Tasty" recipe to Walmart, for example). They all require you knowing what you want already, and I don't know. I want to change my diet to different food, I'm fine not learning how to do that.
I think this problem is overlooked, and frankly invalidated. I don't want to be a recipe enthusiast and I don't care that other people enjoy running around a grocery store in fetch quests as half of the fun in cooking, or that other people don't like how the food delivery person chose the wrong fruit. These aren't important issues to me, and I think there are lots of people like me, although I haven't bothered to quantify this!
So that's decent alpha because I think a lot of people are in similar boats and with this kind of data you could totally elevate a single product for mass purchasing when everyone is buying the same ingredient over food delivery. People that are already fine paying hidden premiums for food delivery.
I'm continuing with my domain parking tool Newsy
https://newsy.co
It's a modern take on domain parking (I know I know) that I'm using for my own ~50 domains.
I will most likely also be re-working on SideProjectors - a marketplace for buying and selling side projects.
https://www.sideprojectors.com
I am also about to launch HN+ (Create your own HN!)
https://hn.plus
https://newsy.co
It's a modern take on domain parking (I know I know) that I'm using for my own ~50 domains.
I will most likely also be re-working on SideProjectors - a marketplace for buying and selling side projects.
https://www.sideprojectors.com
I am also about to launch HN+ (Create your own HN!)
https://hn.plus
I've been using Newsy, but its on my chop block of subscriptions to cut, as I'm trying to scale back my monthly spending to buy a home, though I do think something like this would be cool if it could take topics and auto-churn out chatgpt inspired articles related to topics. Like you could ask chatGPT for 20 blog titles, and then just autocreate new posts based off those titles and things. For domain sitting, it'd probably get some traffic enough to maybe cover the $5/fee at least per month.
My aim is to finish up Concise Encoding [1] and get v1 released before summer. It's an ad-hoc data format with the following design goals:
* Security (tightly specified, safe defaults, consistent implementations, future-proof).
* Native type support, so you don't need to string encode things (I mean c'mon, it's the 21st century).
* Easy to use (no special files or build steps).
* Efficient for humans, efficient for machines.
[1] https://concise-encoding.org/
* Security (tightly specified, safe defaults, consistent implementations, future-proof).
* Native type support, so you don't need to string encode things (I mean c'mon, it's the 21st century).
* Easy to use (no special files or build steps).
* Efficient for humans, efficient for machines.
[1] https://concise-encoding.org/
I'm going to build & launch a new project every week - https://www.radihuq.com/52
https://atomictessellator.com
Public launch in a month or two
I have a VR lab I built so you can visualise chemical reactions in a huge empty room, just because I wanted to learn Unity and multiplayer and WebGL deployments
Modelling for quantum Monte Carlo is almost finished (about 2 weeks away)
Just a lot of tidy ups before public launch really, this is a hobby project of mine, so I’m really just jamming and playing, learning heaps and having tons of fun
Public launch in a month or two
I have a VR lab I built so you can visualise chemical reactions in a huge empty room, just because I wanted to learn Unity and multiplayer and WebGL deployments
Modelling for quantum Monte Carlo is almost finished (about 2 weeks away)
Just a lot of tidy ups before public launch really, this is a hobby project of mine, so I’m really just jamming and playing, learning heaps and having tons of fun
I'll keep building my federated Facebook replacement.
https://github.com/grishka/Smithereen
https://github.com/grishka/Smithereen
Launching an esp32-based camera (both hardware and software) with night vision and motion detection to make it easier to play with different camera sensors, their settings, and TFLite CNNs. It would also support integration with Home Assistant for DYI home automation projects.
https://maxlab.io/portfolio/portfolio-camera-module/
https://maxlab.io/portfolio/portfolio-camera-module/
Are you running a CNN on an ESP32? Is that even possible with so little stack and heap? PRRAM is slow
The ESP32-S3 introduces vector instructions which are supported by TFLite already. See here - https://github.com/espressif/esp-nn#performance
S3 also supports Octal PSRAM vs the single lane SPI PSRAM found on the older ESP32-CAM style boards, should be 8x the bandwidth with all else equal. So far I've only seen the octal PSRAM's available on WROOM modules and it looks likes there only support for Espressif branded Octal PSRAM chips at this point.
S3 also supports Octal PSRAM vs the single lane SPI PSRAM found on the older ESP32-CAM style boards, should be 8x the bandwidth with all else equal. So far I've only seen the octal PSRAM's available on WROOM modules and it looks likes there only support for Espressif branded Octal PSRAM chips at this point.
Wow nice! Thanks!
I'm working on my second novel. I published one in French on Amazon last year which was well received.
This one I'm trying to write in English -- but the writing isn't the hard part; the hard part is finding out what to write. I have a general idea that I think is pretty good, original and relevant for our times. But the division into chapters and scenes is proving quite difficult.
I may have found a system though... Exciting times! ;-)
This one I'm trying to write in English -- but the writing isn't the hard part; the hard part is finding out what to write. I have a general idea that I think is pretty good, original and relevant for our times. But the division into chapters and scenes is proving quite difficult.
I may have found a system though... Exciting times! ;-)
Writing a novel in my native language already sounds challenging for me. I think writing it in a foreign language is a lot harder, and I wouldn't know where to start. Looks like you found a system, hope you can keep the pace and publish it soon. Good luck!
On the personal technology front - I've been finding desktop notifications incredibly frustrating - to the point that I've had them off for years. The reality is that on a per-service basis, I want specific notifications.
I'm working on a CLUI that will receive notifications from my configurations and plugins - so that I can filter what I want specifically. It's a good excuse to play with several random things.
I'm working on a CLUI that will receive notifications from my configurations and plugins - so that I can filter what I want specifically. It's a good excuse to play with several random things.
I finally started working on GigTablet, a resource for gigging bands. I use MainStage for notes but it has no tablet version and therefore requires a laptop mirrored to an ipad to be useful when I’m gigging. Features will include: web-based, song notes/images, gig scheduling, setlist creation, simple mobile UI, master controls so one band member can select the next song and all tablets will update, etc.
I am taking the year to learn French and build a companion product that helps me along the way. Making sure to have sane export functionality for Anki and Quizlet.
I am currently using Music and TV shows as learning materials. Testing out the process on me and validating the NLP components on English and Spanish. I have some books as well to avoid pronouncing things horrendously wrong.
Starting something from scratch is terrifying but exciting.
I am currently using Music and TV shows as learning materials. Testing out the process on me and validating the NLP components on English and Spanish. I have some books as well to avoid pronouncing things horrendously wrong.
Starting something from scratch is terrifying but exciting.
I want to rekindle my curiosity and re-visit a few subjects I've forgotten since graduating, i.e. discrete mathematics, algos, etc. The second half of last year was rough for me as I got put into a leadership position involuntarily and I've been struggling and burning out ever since. This year I want to take back some of my life and rein in some of the negative habits I've developed then.
I recently found out that I'm a direct descendant of 3 families of Mayflower passengers. I'd like to join the Mayflower Society, but the process of researching 8 generations of ancestors will take a bit of time.
I'm really looking forward to digging into my ancestry. I've already discovered some really cool stuff and I see it as problem solving, research and correlation, all of which I really enjoy.
I'm really looking forward to digging into my ancestry. I've already discovered some really cool stuff and I see it as problem solving, research and correlation, all of which I really enjoy.
I'm creating a 3D claymation fight between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Amy Coney Barrett done in the style of Celebrity Deathmatch. I've finally gotten enough Blender modeling, rigging, animating, texturing, materials, and video editing under my belt to start producing whole animations. It's going to take months, but I'm confident I can make it happen.
I got quite frustrated by how much native C++ programs are slow/closed to any kind of introspection/debugging so this year I will be attempting to build a live object inspector/debugger for C++ programs/games, independent of the game engine you are using. I have currently lots of ideas on features I want to build but at least for me it's an interesting challenge to tackle. The basic idea right now is to allow to add small changes to your code live without recompiling the whole thing and I aim for instantaneous compilation times, so adding a print() does not take >=5 seconds to compile. Currently I achieve this by using a scripting language that is exposed to classes/functions/variables in your codebase but I may change the approach later if I find a better solution.
I currently have a prototype but nothing that could be used in production yet: https://donadigo.com/d0/
I currently have a prototype but nothing that could be used in production yet: https://donadigo.com/d0/
Job board focused on Germany. Same procedure as every year.
https://www.arbeitnow.com
https://www.arbeitnow.com
Does Germany need one more?
I’m working on Nimbus Web Services[0], a managed service provider (think redis, object storage, etc) for Hetzner and later OVH and LeaseWeb.
I’ve been chipping away at it for quite a while, but I’m finally in the position of standing up the production coasters and letting people on.
The last 10% seems to always take 90% of the time!
[0]: https://nimbusws.com
I’ve been chipping away at it for quite a while, but I’m finally in the position of standing up the production coasters and letting people on.
The last 10% seems to always take 90% of the time!
[0]: https://nimbusws.com
How do you differ from extending BIG3 cloud providers ?
Well I provide services primarily to a space they’re not in at all.
The cloud providers I target are more seen as “infrastructure providers“ and dont have managed services of their own (except OVH). Offering services on the big 3 providers is something I’ve thought about but is a ways down the road for me.
If you are referencing how the services differ I suspect mine will be worse in every way other than complexity, the big 3 cloud providers have a lot of engineering prowess to throw at any given problem —- Nimbus is more aimed at doing a better job than you could have done in less time (as a IaaS user who has to set up all their own infrastructure), and providing support.
It turns out there are a LOT of open source projects that are extremely good/stable, and mostly work once you set them up properly/ensure they can’t fail catastrophically. Nimbus does the work your sysadmin would do, then makes it available to you.
The cloud providers I target are more seen as “infrastructure providers“ and dont have managed services of their own (except OVH). Offering services on the big 3 providers is something I’ve thought about but is a ways down the road for me.
If you are referencing how the services differ I suspect mine will be worse in every way other than complexity, the big 3 cloud providers have a lot of engineering prowess to throw at any given problem —- Nimbus is more aimed at doing a better job than you could have done in less time (as a IaaS user who has to set up all their own infrastructure), and providing support.
It turns out there are a LOT of open source projects that are extremely good/stable, and mostly work once you set them up properly/ensure they can’t fail catastrophically. Nimbus does the work your sysadmin would do, then makes it available to you.
I'm working on a free and opensource Rails 7 starter kit currently that comes with
- User authentication & authorization - Background worker & scheduler - Roles & permissions management - Pre built UI layouts and themes
https://github.com/tarunvelli/rails-tabler-starter
- User authentication & authorization - Background worker & scheduler - Roles & permissions management - Pre built UI layouts and themes
https://github.com/tarunvelli/rails-tabler-starter
You should look at https://github.com/filamentphp/filament - if anything could be a good starting point.
http://explicable.ai/
It's a dead-simple data exploration and prediction micro-saas, but with a lot of nice pixels and state-of the art AI/ML algorithms. Most people think AI/ML is indistinguishable from magic (especially high-ranking decision makers). Let it look like magic!
----
Currently in open alpha. I'd be quite thankful if you the reader want to provide feedback, or tell you need a feature, or tell if you feel you have a need for it (or know someone who does), and how much you would pay for it; at [email protected] or [email protected] or here. Do not hesitate to ask me for a demo, or tell me you want to start buying the service ;)
Quite open to be sponsored/funded as well!
----
How you interact with it:
1) Prepare your data in excel/csv according to guidelines, upload it
2) Explore it like in the demo and get insights. Get a report and a link that you can share.
3a) Redo a cycle to 1) if necessary
3b) If it's ok, you can upload new data for prediction
It's a dead-simple data exploration and prediction micro-saas, but with a lot of nice pixels and state-of the art AI/ML algorithms. Most people think AI/ML is indistinguishable from magic (especially high-ranking decision makers). Let it look like magic!
----
Currently in open alpha. I'd be quite thankful if you the reader want to provide feedback, or tell you need a feature, or tell if you feel you have a need for it (or know someone who does), and how much you would pay for it; at [email protected] or [email protected] or here. Do not hesitate to ask me for a demo, or tell me you want to start buying the service ;)
Quite open to be sponsored/funded as well!
----
How you interact with it:
1) Prepare your data in excel/csv according to guidelines, upload it
2) Explore it like in the demo and get insights. Get a report and a link that you can share.
3a) Redo a cycle to 1) if necessary
3b) If it's ok, you can upload new data for prediction
I will continue working on the first app I ever have launched.
It's a private local server monitoring that runs on your computer and alarm you if something is going wrong. No data ever leaves your computer except just to check your license! No complexity just showing the vital info and thats it.
https://hiadmiral.com
It's a private local server monitoring that runs on your computer and alarm you if something is going wrong. No data ever leaves your computer except just to check your license! No complexity just showing the vital info and thats it.
https://hiadmiral.com
I'm continuing to work on a finance-related platform discovery tool: https://www.swiftsalary.com/platforms
With the tool, anyone can easily sort through a variety of money-making and money-management platforms to find work, investment opportunities, budgeting tools, and more.
When you find a platform you're interested in, you can easily learn more about it, read user reviews, and evaluate it on your own.
I'm hoping this tool will make it easier for people around the world to improve their financial situation.
With the tool, anyone can easily sort through a variety of money-making and money-management platforms to find work, investment opportunities, budgeting tools, and more.
When you find a platform you're interested in, you can easily learn more about it, read user reviews, and evaluate it on your own.
I'm hoping this tool will make it easier for people around the world to improve their financial situation.
[deleted]
I want to write a C compiler in Rust for fun :)
I'm working on getting back into programming. I took a break after burning out.
My main love of software has always been writing programs that deal with music and audio. I'm going to spend more time writing plugins and building out more of my ontological approach to music theory, and eventually work on more evaluation models.
My main love of software has always been writing programs that deal with music and audio. I'm going to spend more time writing plugins and building out more of my ontological approach to music theory, and eventually work on more evaluation models.
This long weekend (4 nights, 3 days) I built Ben Eater's 6502 computer kit (along with the clock module as a pre-requisite). Just got to the point where it prints "Hello, World!" on the LCD. The most time-consuming part is that I'm making the wires nice and neat like he does, so there's a lot of measuring, cutting, bending, and stripping wires. One of the funniest parts was the first few programs run off of ROM. When you first add subroutines, it doesn't actually work because there's no actual RAM yet; it needs RAM in order for the jump to subroutine to push the return address on a stack in RAM. So hooking up a RAM chip is another 30 or so wires that you have to make. I suppose at some point I will make a Forth for it. I had been wanting to get the kit for years, but finally got around to it by asking for the kit for Christmas.
Adding to the list of note taking apps, I’m working on an open source local note taking app that works in a browser called bangle.io [1]. It provides a rich WYSIWYG interface, allows syncing with GitHub without any backend and I love working on it .
[1] https://bangle.io
[1] https://bangle.io
I'm working on Autotype [1], a text expansion tool with UX similar to VSCode's command palette.
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autotype/mgcgenipp...
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autotype/mgcgenipp...
Open-source blockchain analytics tool [1]. Lots of use-cases, but a straightforward one is compliance. Many alternatives in the space, but most are SaaS-only.
Still early in the journey, but feel free to star or follow along:
[1] https://github.com/barreleye/barreleye
Still early in the journey, but feel free to star or follow along:
[1] https://github.com/barreleye/barreleye
Hmm, this might be useful for my project to use reinforcement learning on-chain! I'm toward the end of learning most of what I need, so it's data time.
I'm learning to code for the fun of it, and this year I want to learn about Assembly programming, Embedded Systems Bare Metal programming, as well as improve my C programming. (I enjoy low-level stuff). I hope to get good enough to contribute to graphical projects like RayLib and Godot.
At least that's the long-range plan!
At least that's the long-range plan!
This year I don't anticipate having much free time, so I'm trying to engage more contributors in side projects,
* Automotive ECU tooling, https://github.com/bri3d/VW_Flash
* DJI FPV forward/reverse/all sorts engineering, https://github.com/fpv-wtf
I've been working a lot with various folks using Discord and contributions are gradually shifting from me towards others, which has been great to see. As the old adage goes, teaching a project is truly the final form of knowing one - much harder than hacking alone, but ultimately more fulfilling.
When I started my automotive ECU journey my goal was to demystify the "tuning" scene for a broader software engineering community, and I think I've generally been successful at this.
* Automotive ECU tooling, https://github.com/bri3d/VW_Flash
* DJI FPV forward/reverse/all sorts engineering, https://github.com/fpv-wtf
I've been working a lot with various folks using Discord and contributions are gradually shifting from me towards others, which has been great to see. As the old adage goes, teaching a project is truly the final form of knowing one - much harder than hacking alone, but ultimately more fulfilling.
When I started my automotive ECU journey my goal was to demystify the "tuning" scene for a broader software engineering community, and I think I've generally been successful at this.
I'm currently forking Chromium to render directly in a terminal to learn Rust. It lets you browse the web from a server using a stock terminal app and SSH for example.
It's working and I'm currently making performance adjustments. Hoping to share it here with the technical journey in the next few weeks!
It's working and I'm currently making performance adjustments. Hoping to share it here with the technical journey in the next few weeks!
I have a friend with a 1953 vintage Dage Model 60[1] camera, and also a Model 101. We're trying to get them running again, with no schematics, and only vague hints of documentation.
We have a NEW and tested vidicon, and others that we can test in a newer Motorola camera, so that's a plus.
In the past we gotten several HP 5061B cesium beam atomic clocks[2] back from the dead, so we'll get there eventually.
[1] https://www.tvcameramuseum.org/dage/60b/60b1.htm
[2] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dga/time/5061/5061B_ops.pdf
We have a NEW and tested vidicon, and others that we can test in a newer Motorola camera, so that's a plus.
In the past we gotten several HP 5061B cesium beam atomic clocks[2] back from the dead, so we'll get there eventually.
[1] https://www.tvcameramuseum.org/dage/60b/60b1.htm
[2] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dga/time/5061/5061B_ops.pdf
Continue to work on my indie iOS finance App that helps user to track net worth:
https://www.percento.app
I've been working on this App for 3 years now, I've earned some users in my country. I'm planning to bring more growth in other countries.
https://www.percento.app
I've been working on this App for 3 years now, I've earned some users in my country. I'm planning to bring more growth in other countries.
I am working on an open-source natural language search for codebases. I thought it might be interesting to be able to search for relevant classes, functions etc. when the codebases are very large. Then further I am planning on extending it to searching for git commits, PRs, issues etc.
I recently created a first version and uploaded on github. https://github.com/rahuldan/codesearch
Would love to hear your feedback
Would love to hear your feedback
I've got a lot of drafts (counting in the low hundreds), but I am not quite for publishing unfinished stuff. So this year I'm going heavy on publishing that. In addition, I have several projects on my mind I'll be working on this year:
- A browser extension for HN written in WASM (Rust)
- A book about NixOS
- Want to finally set a start up, hopefully, I'll have something to show within 2 months
I also have a newsletter for my blog [0]. If you wish to track the progress on the mentioned items, feel free to subscribe, that would be highly appreciated. Btw, people are subscribing, but many have not confirmed their subscription (newsletter is double opt-in).
[0] https://drakerossman.com
- A browser extension for HN written in WASM (Rust)
- A book about NixOS
- Want to finally set a start up, hopefully, I'll have something to show within 2 months
I also have a newsletter for my blog [0]. If you wish to track the progress on the mentioned items, feel free to subscribe, that would be highly appreciated. Btw, people are subscribing, but many have not confirmed their subscription (newsletter is double opt-in).
[0] https://drakerossman.com
Magento.
You would think that 20+ years in Python and PHP would make any modern framework a breeze. Not so for an Adobe product! (yes, I know that Adobe purchased the framework, but did not develop it... I suspect that the purchase appeal was the developer "experience")
Apparently PHP is just too hard to use, so to make customization possible by content managers without needed a PHP developer, Magento employs an XML config system. Because XML is so much easier to use, right? Because there exist easy to use XML tools that warn of misconfigurations, bad syntax, typos in element names, typos in attribute names, typos in attribute values, and typos in tag values. Because content managers can safely SSH into the server to recompile the entire XML config from a CLI. Because content managers can read the docs - not that there are much in practice anyway - and understand how to configure the XML. Because content managers can grep and sed and perl and awk and sort their way to finding what depends on what. Because content managers understand when a namespace needs a leading backslash, and when a leading backslash is forbidden, and case sensitivity, and the difference between an underscore and a dash and a space and a and whatever nonprinting unicode character they managed to copy off Raj's blog post. Because content managers understand that config relevant to Magento 1 is not relevant Magento 2 (which share only name and logo) so that needs to be checked _before_ you put that in the live config and recompile while users are trying to browse the site. Because content managers understand that _this_ element needs CamelCase, but the same string must be snake_case when used in that attribute over there.
Don't get me started on the PHP aspects of Magento! Or the Magento ORM. Or the Magento docs. Or the Magento deploy process. Or the heavy dependency on a patched minor JS framework for all backend UI elements. Or the server spec requirements. Or the heavy reliance on PHP magic methods. Or the fact that the entire community seems to exist due to the benefit of one prolific blogger who burned out two minor versions back.
You would think that 20+ years in Python and PHP would make any modern framework a breeze. Not so for an Adobe product! (yes, I know that Adobe purchased the framework, but did not develop it... I suspect that the purchase appeal was the developer "experience")
Apparently PHP is just too hard to use, so to make customization possible by content managers without needed a PHP developer, Magento employs an XML config system. Because XML is so much easier to use, right? Because there exist easy to use XML tools that warn of misconfigurations, bad syntax, typos in element names, typos in attribute names, typos in attribute values, and typos in tag values. Because content managers can safely SSH into the server to recompile the entire XML config from a CLI. Because content managers can read the docs - not that there are much in practice anyway - and understand how to configure the XML. Because content managers can grep and sed and perl and awk and sort their way to finding what depends on what. Because content managers understand when a namespace needs a leading backslash, and when a leading backslash is forbidden, and case sensitivity, and the difference between an underscore and a dash and a space and a and whatever nonprinting unicode character they managed to copy off Raj's blog post. Because content managers understand that config relevant to Magento 1 is not relevant Magento 2 (which share only name and logo) so that needs to be checked _before_ you put that in the live config and recompile while users are trying to browse the site. Because content managers understand that _this_ element needs CamelCase, but the same string must be snake_case when used in that attribute over there.
Don't get me started on the PHP aspects of Magento! Or the Magento ORM. Or the Magento docs. Or the Magento deploy process. Or the heavy dependency on a patched minor JS framework for all backend UI elements. Or the server spec requirements. Or the heavy reliance on PHP magic methods. Or the fact that the entire community seems to exist due to the benefit of one prolific blogger who burned out two minor versions back.
Few months ago I found out that there is such thing as tinyML. The popular introductory material is a book by Pete Warden and Daniel Situnayake, and free edX course with paid certificate. Arduino has also released a kit for that course. Santa read my letter and now I have one laying on my desk. I know a little bit about DL but exactly nothing a bout microcontrollers. I have a simple project in mind that should help me become more familiar with the topics, once I will be done with the course. I don't think unfortunately that I will be able to use this knowledge anytime soon at work but building things at this level of complexity should not be expensive and I hope the inspiration for the new projects will come once I will get my hands dirty.
I've been trying to think of some ideas for mobile applications to build. I want to break into the mobile space in some way, but all of my ideas seem to already exist and demotivates me from actually doing anything. Maybe someday I will get out of that headspace.
I plan to work on an idea I’ve been thinking about for 2 years already.
It’s a mix of Intercom and Bugsnag, but made for technical people. For indie-hackers and small dev-houses where developers themselves have to support users and are not affraid of code and stack traces. Especially for mobile apps.
All these customer support tools are web only and focused mostly on marketing and sales. But my experience from my failed startup is that it works really well to get in touch with your users when you’re an indie hacker. Or to bugfix while on live chat with the user who can reproduce a bug.
Also I don’t know why, but all these support tools except Intercom have really bad ux and are slow and buggy. They also neglect mobile apps, all is web only. Or maybe I’ missing some real gem on the field…
It’s a mix of Intercom and Bugsnag, but made for technical people. For indie-hackers and small dev-houses where developers themselves have to support users and are not affraid of code and stack traces. Especially for mobile apps.
All these customer support tools are web only and focused mostly on marketing and sales. But my experience from my failed startup is that it works really well to get in touch with your users when you’re an indie hacker. Or to bugfix while on live chat with the user who can reproduce a bug.
Also I don’t know why, but all these support tools except Intercom have really bad ux and are slow and buggy. They also neglect mobile apps, all is web only. Or maybe I’ missing some real gem on the field…
My printing app (for Sailfish OS) is now pretty much done.
https://github.com/attah/harbour-seaprint
It works very well with the vast majority of even remotely modern networked printers, and has no dependency to CUPS, foomatic or other legacy stuff.
For this year i'll learn from my mistakes and move over any remaining logic from QML/JS to C++ so that it can be made useful for other OSes, for the remote chance that anybody would care about it.
Since QML has many dialects and basically needs duplicated effort for several platforms, the "frontend" part should be as slim as possible.
For this year i'll learn from my mistakes and move over any remaining logic from QML/JS to C++ so that it can be made useful for other OSes, for the remote chance that anybody would care about it.
Since QML has many dialects and basically needs duplicated effort for several platforms, the "frontend" part should be as slim as possible.
I haven't decided on something final, but with the release of Dwarf Fortress on Steam I got inspired to try something similar - although obviously of massively more humbling scale. Basically, I want to implement an ant simulation, down to pheromones, etc. and if that goes well combine it with reinforcement learning. Less of a video game and more of a self running simulation, though.
That, and actually get around to study more math and read more books and write my own horror and scifi short stories, that I have floating around in my head.
Busy year.
That, and actually get around to study more math and read more books and write my own horror and scifi short stories, that I have floating around in my head.
Busy year.
Decluttering and organizing multiple aspects of my life, and making time to take care of myself.
Wrapping up a system where I can pay people per image and annotation for building computer vision data sets. Applying for my federal firearm manufacturer license so I can 3d print guns in California. Hopefully landing SBIR funding to go full time on my projects.
Have been working on a dark mode extension for Chrome and Firefox. The idea is to make it as lightweight as possible.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-mode-lit...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-mode-lite/bdl...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-mode-lit...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-mode-lite/bdl...
A music magazine to help artists and musicians not starve, and to sing the gospel psychedelic.
I’d love to hear more and how you’re doing that?
Oh I'm delighted someone wants to know more. The mag is called electriCushion and the website is the same name. Soon, you will be able to request a free physical copy of issue 1 delivered to you. It is a donations-only publication because we talk about a lot of controversial topics and include a lot of beautiful art and some critical thinking / philosophy stuff. I am working with local artists and artisans to feature their creations in the magazine, a little "product catalogue" of sorts, and I hope to continue working with them to create custom merchandise for the bands in our musicians' collective.
I too am interested in this.
Continuing to work on the soroban-sdk[1] and soroban wasm environment[2], but after spending last year completely immersed in Rust, which was exhilarating learning experience, I'm really hoping to find some ways to spend more time back developing in Go soon and hope to do more of that this year, but unclear on exact plan for that yet.
Also hoping to find some small uses cases for cutting my teeth on using Zig beyond the toying around I've done recently.
[1]: https://docs.rs/soroban-sdk
[2]: https://github.com/stellar/rs-soroban-env
Also hoping to find some small uses cases for cutting my teeth on using Zig beyond the toying around I've done recently.
[1]: https://docs.rs/soroban-sdk
[2]: https://github.com/stellar/rs-soroban-env
I'm trying to make a dent in the UX of crypto. Currently, it really really sucks.
The first thing we've built is https://peanut.to - a way to pay people with just a link.
Happy to take feedback and suggestions!
The first thing we've built is https://peanut.to - a way to pay people with just a link.
Happy to take feedback and suggestions!
Is this built on Ethereum? What does the rest of your stack look like?
For now we're on EVM's, yes (Ethereum but also it's Layers 2s and sidechains)
But we really want to deploy on all sorts of chains and offer very very simple UX for users. No one should have to care about bridging between chains or swapping or what currency they are getting paid in. If crypto is to get mass adoption, stuff should be dead simple.
Rest of the stack: - postgres DB - Flask Backend - Alpine JS / TailwindCSS / HTMX / ethersjs / web3modal on Frontend (and then obviously the decentralized smart contracts)
Happy to answer other questions!
But we really want to deploy on all sorts of chains and offer very very simple UX for users. No one should have to care about bridging between chains or swapping or what currency they are getting paid in. If crypto is to get mass adoption, stuff should be dead simple.
Rest of the stack: - postgres DB - Flask Backend - Alpine JS / TailwindCSS / HTMX / ethersjs / web3modal on Frontend (and then obviously the decentralized smart contracts)
Happy to answer other questions!
I will keep on working on my Cybersecurity newsletter [1] and expand it to more things Cyber with the inclusion of adjacent tools i.e. data breaches list, privacy guides, maybe job board.
A rebrand is also likely on the way, as the concept has proven to work.
[1] cyb3rsecurity.tips
A rebrand is also likely on the way, as the concept has proven to work.
[1] cyb3rsecurity.tips
My cup literally runneth over.
I'm launching a series of community-focused dinners for Colorado-based CEOs and VCs (https://www.ThunderviewCEODinners.com)
I'm launching a social photo-sharing game that I designed over a decade ago and then put in the icebox. Super excited to share when this comes out.
I'm launching a new coaching program for successful entrepreneurs on finding enduring fulfillment and happiness in their lives by identifying and pursuing their greatest values.
And I'm still coaching 15+ early-stage startup founders at any given time. Despite all the work, I've never been happier.
I'm launching a series of community-focused dinners for Colorado-based CEOs and VCs (https://www.ThunderviewCEODinners.com)
I'm launching a social photo-sharing game that I designed over a decade ago and then put in the icebox. Super excited to share when this comes out.
I'm launching a new coaching program for successful entrepreneurs on finding enduring fulfillment and happiness in their lives by identifying and pursuing their greatest values.
And I'm still coaching 15+ early-stage startup founders at any given time. Despite all the work, I've never been happier.
I’m building and launching a new WordPress plugin with a new partner soon, and we’re planning on doing it live and in public. Weekly calls will be live streamed and archived. Some of it will not be pretty. :-) Sign up here if you want to follow along: https://express.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=9ee9c87b6b6...
I have an open source video player for esports coaches that allows them to view video synced to all members of their team:
https://www.vodon.gg/
This year I'm going to move it from being an Electron app to online (and a PWA). I'm also going to introduce the ability to stream video from live matches (also capture it for later playback) as well as capture the events from the games themselves and connect that with some kind of data analysis tooling so you can ask questions like "What % of headshots were landed in the pistol round of my last three CS:GO matches".
https://www.vodon.gg/
This year I'm going to move it from being an Electron app to online (and a PWA). I'm also going to introduce the ability to stream video from live matches (also capture it for later playback) as well as capture the events from the games themselves and connect that with some kind of data analysis tooling so you can ask questions like "What % of headshots were landed in the pistol round of my last three CS:GO matches".
I'm playing with some ideas around making IVF more accessible in the U.S. and Europe, making home (or apartment) ownership more accessible in Sub-Saharan Africa, community based emergency services in Sub-Saharan Africa, and mining automation... trying to go through and weed things down to one particular area over the next ~6 months with the intention of trying to start really building something in Q2/Q3. If anyone is interested/knowledgeable about the aforementioned areas (or just wants to spitball about things that are potentially high impact, always happy to jam out).
Kinda tangentially related, I want to start a software co-op or consulting biz (to pay for) intentional communities built around cheaper alternative homing solutions. E.g. Tiny homes, dome homes, earth ship, earth bag, cob, etc. There's a youtube channel of a family that built free-standing studio-like homes for each of their kids for under 10k each. Lots of work, but looks fun and worthwhile. Housing is horrendous but if you bought 40 acres, and planned it well, you could house like 500 people, and maybe charge per room/person in household a small housing fee, with waivers for volunteering/service around the neighborhood. We could have some common areas and shared major purchases like tools, recreational vehicles, etc so there's less consumerism but not less enjoyment of the nice things in life.
I'm working on SourceShield (https://sourceshield.io) - a software supply chain security platform that's fully integrated into developer workflows/tooling (GitHub, AWS, etc.). I just started working on it a few weeks ago, so it's more of a set of tools/PoCs at this point. I'm focusing less on dependency security (which is quite a saturated market - think products like Snyk) and more on the other components of the supply chain: SCM, pipelines, build tooling, integrity validation, etc.
I'm working on a 2D top-down time attack skill based spaceship racing game.
I plan to release it on Steam and Google Play Store this year.
I'm the solodev making the Game, Game Server, as well as various integrations to external systems
I plan to release it on Steam and Google Play Store this year.
I'm the solodev making the Game, Game Server, as well as various integrations to external systems
I wrote a self help book about relaxation and want to make it better this year by adding couple of chapters on how to live a more meaningful life. and marketing of the book. thats the side goal for this year :)
Building for a good while something like plex, but for documents including a scheduler system for recurring events and reminders.
It's not the usual document management system, but it has some features of it.
That sounds interesting. Could you expand your description or give a link for more information?
Working on an ebook showing data engineers how to debug data pipelines, Kafka queues and expunge bad data from their database. Basically a how to guide to stop data pollution that happens in most companies.
I’m finally learning how to think in triangles. After that, maybe shaders.
I recently fell in love with node-based editors so I'm working on several plugins for my game engine https://github.com/nem0/LumixEngine, e.g. node-based procedural geometry plugin, node-based image editor, visual scripting or node-based level generator. I am also thinking about using WASM as runtime for the visual script, which also means easier support for scripting in other languages which can compile to WASM.
A video course for software engineering managers to learn about testing, it's called Ready to Test:
https://testfromthetop.com/ReadyToTest/
This is aimed at getting managers new to testing up to speed from the very beginning. For me this is the start of a series of material progressing to more advanced concepts.
If you're interested at all I'd love to hear from you! We're starting a beta-testing program before release, message me to try the course for free.
https://testfromthetop.com/ReadyToTest/
This is aimed at getting managers new to testing up to speed from the very beginning. For me this is the start of a series of material progressing to more advanced concepts.
If you're interested at all I'd love to hear from you! We're starting a beta-testing program before release, message me to try the course for free.
I just bought my first house, so I am hoping to sink my teeth into some home improvement tasks (drilling, basic plumbing, changing light fixtures etc) - definitely a challenge for someone who's only lived in rentals before.
Also interested in making the home as energy efficient as possible (LED bulbs, better insulation, smart thermostatic valves on the radiators etc). If anyone has any resources to read on this please share! For anything "smart" I'm looking for local-first systems without cloud dependencies.
Also interested in making the home as energy efficient as possible (LED bulbs, better insulation, smart thermostatic valves on the radiators etc). If anyone has any resources to read on this please share! For anything "smart" I'm looking for local-first systems without cloud dependencies.
Just a suggestion for you, based on my own home improvements: break bigger things in smaller tasks and try to finish them in the same day or the day after. Sometimes life gets in the way, or you lose steam, and an incomplete repair or unfinished task starts to become a psychological drag or even make a section of your house unusable.
Another one: buy the basic tools (screwdrivers, hammer, pliers, saw, sets of screws and nails) whenever possible and have them always available, but buy other tools as you go along, because only then you'll know what you are going to need.
And yet another one: don't be afraid to do (most) things. If you do a bad job or break something you can learn something from that and re-try. If not, you can always (or mostly) hire someone to fix your errors.
I'm not a native EN speaker and slept poorly last night, so I hope you can understand my suggestions!
Another one: buy the basic tools (screwdrivers, hammer, pliers, saw, sets of screws and nails) whenever possible and have them always available, but buy other tools as you go along, because only then you'll know what you are going to need.
And yet another one: don't be afraid to do (most) things. If you do a bad job or break something you can learn something from that and re-try. If not, you can always (or mostly) hire someone to fix your errors.
I'm not a native EN speaker and slept poorly last night, so I hope you can understand my suggestions!
Thank you! I will absolutely bear that in mind, and I'm definitely conscious of taking on too much with work and family commitments.
Your English is perfect!
Your English is perfect!
Make sure to give Home Assistant a try. It's local first (option to add a "Cloud" connection). It has, by far, the biggest community around home automation. It's easy to extend yourself. It just ticks all the boxes. I've never heard someone talking bad about it.
https://www.home-assistant.io/
Tip: don't bother running it as a container or "standalone", just use their HAOS distribution.
https://www.home-assistant.io/
Tip: don't bother running it as a container or "standalone", just use their HAOS distribution.
Thanks! Been eyeing up Home Assistant a lot over the last few days. Also tempted to attach a touchscreen to my raspberry pi, put it in a nice case and use that as a UI for it, though adding a web browser to the installation rules out using HAOS directly I guess? What are the reasons to prefer HAOS over installing via docker on a host system?
> Also tempted to attach a touchscreen to my raspberry pi, put it in a nice case and use that as a UI for it, though adding a web browser to the installation rules out using HAOS directly I guess?
I don't get that part? HAOS is a Linux distribution with a pre-configured / installed version of Home Assistant. It behaves (almost - see below) like a "normal" Home Assistant installation.
> What are the reasons to prefer HAOS over installing via docker on a host system?
For me it's that you can manage "addons" directly via Home Assistant e.g. if you need a MQTT broker on your system (I do because I use zigbee2mqtt for integration of my Zigbee devices) you can just go to the addon store, click install and it also automatically integrates with Home Assistant. Same for zigbee2mqtt. If you want to do that with a container version of HA you need to start up a MQTT / zigbee2mqtt broker manually (as another container) and then connect it to HA. It's not the end of the world, but why make it harder as it could be.
You can also upgrade HA via the UI and don't have to stop the container, chose another image, restart the container. Backup & restore is also breeze.
I don't get that part? HAOS is a Linux distribution with a pre-configured / installed version of Home Assistant. It behaves (almost - see below) like a "normal" Home Assistant installation.
> What are the reasons to prefer HAOS over installing via docker on a host system?
For me it's that you can manage "addons" directly via Home Assistant e.g. if you need a MQTT broker on your system (I do because I use zigbee2mqtt for integration of my Zigbee devices) you can just go to the addon store, click install and it also automatically integrates with Home Assistant. Same for zigbee2mqtt. If you want to do that with a container version of HA you need to start up a MQTT / zigbee2mqtt broker manually (as another container) and then connect it to HA. It's not the end of the world, but why make it harder as it could be.
You can also upgrade HA via the UI and don't have to stop the container, chose another image, restart the container. Backup & restore is also breeze.
> I don't get that part? HAOS is a Linux distribution with a pre-configured / installed version of Home Assistant. It behaves (almost - see below) like a "normal" Home Assistant installation.
I would like to have a Raspberry Pi running HA, whilst also having a web browser running on the pi with a small touch screen, showing the HA dashboard on display somewhere in the house. This is in no way a deal breaker though, I could just as easily access it through my phone or another device. I'm assuming (perhaps wrongly) that HAOS is just the daemon, and doesnt have a UI that would show on an external display? I hope that makes sense.
I would like to have a Raspberry Pi running HA, whilst also having a web browser running on the pi with a small touch screen, showing the HA dashboard on display somewhere in the house. This is in no way a deal breaker though, I could just as easily access it through my phone or another device. I'm assuming (perhaps wrongly) that HAOS is just the daemon, and doesnt have a UI that would show on an external display? I hope that makes sense.
Ahh got it. No, HAOS features a full HA installation including the UI which is then of course also accessible via the Raspberry Pi and an attached display :)
Presuming the question is primarily aimed at software/technology, I’m working on an email checker for the macOS menu bar. (Shameless plug: there’s a sketch and an extremely low volume newsletter available for anyone interested in eventual progress.[0])
More broadly but still related, tomorrow I start as a Squad Lead at work, which will be my first foray into any sort of people management. Excited to learn new types of skills!
[0]: https://binarywidgets.com
More broadly but still related, tomorrow I start as a Squad Lead at work, which will be my first foray into any sort of people management. Excited to learn new types of skills!
[0]: https://binarywidgets.com
I'm going to try my hand at an open source smart home. It'll hopefully start with a low-power home server for a e-book library and plex server, and ideally blossom into stuff like smart lighting that looks 'bioluminescent' at night, voice control and scheduling for blinds, privacy windows - and self regulation of air quality and heating/electricity.
It's all very doable, but i've never had the time (or made the time), so here's hoping it's this year.
It's all very doable, but i've never had the time (or made the time), so here's hoping it's this year.
I'm continue to grow my small SaaS. Hopefully to reach ramen profitability this year.
I also have a few other startup ideas to pursue, hopefully one of them can turn into a profitable business :D
I also have a few other startup ideas to pursue, hopefully one of them can turn into a profitable business :D
Trying to make an academic article dashboard for personal use.
Something that would let me select a couple of academic journals and display latest papers published in them, along with abstracts.
I can't even find a free API to reliably get abstracts. After spending an hour reading the docs and failing to understand the monetization model, I refuse to use Elsevier's APIs.
I will probably use Crossref's API and just not display abstracts at all. I will put links to publisher's site and to Sci-Hub in the dashboard items.
Something that would let me select a couple of academic journals and display latest papers published in them, along with abstracts.
I can't even find a free API to reliably get abstracts. After spending an hour reading the docs and failing to understand the monetization model, I refuse to use Elsevier's APIs.
I will probably use Crossref's API and just not display abstracts at all. I will put links to publisher's site and to Sci-Hub in the dashboard items.
I'm helping my Chinese-teaching girlfriend expand her online teaching business. She has zero business background and zero tech background, but even then still managed to land some consistent students last year.
This year I'm using my product development/tech background to help her make a logo, brand guidelines, set up landing pages for her Chinese teaching programs, setup CRMs to track potential student leads, help her write a sales script, etc. It's lots of fun!
This year I'm using my product development/tech background to help her make a logo, brand guidelines, set up landing pages for her Chinese teaching programs, setup CRMs to track potential student leads, help her write a sales script, etc. It's lots of fun!
Scaling my businesses from $4M profits to around $12M in profits.
I think there is a huge opportunity in the dampening of the financial markets, to use that to get people to buy my products and services.
I think there is a huge opportunity in the dampening of the financial markets, to use that to get people to buy my products and services.
What is your business? I'm starting out now at $0 profits. Hope to change that this year.
I have multiple businesses. All online, some in the B2B space and some in the B2C space. My biggest tip would be: focus on the supply chain. Supply chains are the secret to business. It took me a decade of failures to get this fact. If you ever played factorio, therein lies the secret to business. The rest of it is just funnel optimization.
What do you mean by supply chain in relation to a software company (assuming you're talking about software and not trading / eCommerce)?
Yup every company has a supply chain. In software the supply chain is new designs, new code, new customers, new support tickets. Arrange them on a board and optimize the flows. If you do not have flow on a certain track, focus on building that track up but make sure that it fits into the big picture and zoom out like in factorio.
e.g. If you have raw materials, i.e. designers, they should always be creating design assets of some sort. No raw materials should be sitting around on building huge deliverables. They need to be bite sized, and then it is up to you where you direct that flow.
When starting out you need a constant flow of customers. Right now tiktok is the best faucet by far. Even 3 videos can get you 100s of visitors to your landing page. Now the game begins. Do they just go away. That means your offer on the landing page is not good enough. Now increase the offer. Outrageous example: "We pay you $100 for signing up and trying our software". Now you have customer flow. And then it is back to optimization.
Hope that makes sense. I struggled so long because I didn't understand supply chains, faucets, flow etc.
e.g. If you have raw materials, i.e. designers, they should always be creating design assets of some sort. No raw materials should be sitting around on building huge deliverables. They need to be bite sized, and then it is up to you where you direct that flow.
When starting out you need a constant flow of customers. Right now tiktok is the best faucet by far. Even 3 videos can get you 100s of visitors to your landing page. Now the game begins. Do they just go away. That means your offer on the landing page is not good enough. Now increase the offer. Outrageous example: "We pay you $100 for signing up and trying our software". Now you have customer flow. And then it is back to optimization.
Hope that makes sense. I struggled so long because I didn't understand supply chains, faucets, flow etc.
Awesome, thanks! I didn't think about it that way so far but that makes a lot of sense.
I'm working on a tool for OBS which allows the creation and population of graphics templates. There are tools for overlays/lowerthirds but I find they are inflexible.
I'll continue working on my open source crm iceburg.ca I just added an admin builder, image/video fields and a workflow feature.
We'll see what the next year brings.
Curious about the name - in US English we spell it iceberg. Is it spelled differently in CA, or was it an intentional decision?
It's a common misspelling in Canada which allowed me pickup the domain name. I didn't realize it when I purchased the name many years ago. When I was trying out a few domain names in google this name is the one name that didn't seem to exist as a crm.
Continuing to work on https://www.vantage.sh/
We help individuals and companies get visibility on and optimize their cloud infrastructure costs. Currently support AWS, Datadog, Azure, GCP, Snowflake, Databricks and Fastly.
We originally launched on HN nearly 2 years ago now and it's been a very enjoyable experience so far. Feel free to shoot me a note if I can help out on anything infrastructure-cost related.
We help individuals and companies get visibility on and optimize their cloud infrastructure costs. Currently support AWS, Datadog, Azure, GCP, Snowflake, Databricks and Fastly.
We originally launched on HN nearly 2 years ago now and it's been a very enjoyable experience so far. Feel free to shoot me a note if I can help out on anything infrastructure-cost related.
I want to transition into UX/UI design, aka Digital Product Design eventually. Not sure that going to happen in 2023, but I'm collecting books and courses right now.
I will hopefully be finishing the first playable version of a game
I've been working on for some years now.
A game that allows you to build machines.
This a video of a very simple demo:
https://www.reddit.com/r/indiegames/comments/zolsc4/dominoes...
A game that allows you to build machines.
This a video of a very simple demo:
https://www.reddit.com/r/indiegames/comments/zolsc4/dominoes...
Marketing (relaunching?) and/or finding the user base for my no-workflow CSS framework[0], working on a self-hosting solution for creators, and maybe an HHS[1] demo project if they ever get proper documentation up.
[0] https://casscss.github.io/cass/ [1] https://www.hyperhyperspace.org/
[0] https://casscss.github.io/cass/ [1] https://www.hyperhyperspace.org/
My Christmas project that did pretty well on Reddit: Helping shoppers find good deals through visual lookalikes. https://getscore.app
https://www.reddit.com/r/frugalmalefashion/comments/zydup3/i...
https://www.reddit.com/r/frugalmalefashion/comments/zydup3/i...
When chatGPT first came out, my first thought was to replicate it myself. But then, I have too many missing skills or lack the time for backend, frontend and deployment. So I found LAION started an initiative for open-assistant.
https://github.com/LAION-AI/Open-Assistant
So I just join them, so far its quite an active community working on pushing out the initial 0.1 version.
So I just join them, so far its quite an active community working on pushing out the initial 0.1 version.
I'm working on bringing Speech to Text and some contextualization for Police/Fire/EMS Scanner projects.
I host P25 monitoring appliances that I've built and have hosted in a few different cities (that I have apartments at) and want to know if there's a fire/police/EMS call near my house without having to listen to the scanner 24/7.
I basically just want to know if it's safe to walk my dog or if I should wait 15-20 mins.
I host P25 monitoring appliances that I've built and have hosted in a few different cities (that I have apartments at) and want to know if there's a fire/police/EMS call near my house without having to listen to the scanner 24/7.
I basically just want to know if it's safe to walk my dog or if I should wait 15-20 mins.
Love this. I have often thought about doing the same thing, but using the audio feeds from broadcastify perhaps.
If the number of sign ups keeps increasing in current rate, I will most likely continue with enhancing the “Do I need an Umbrella Today?” app: https://umbrellatoday.app/#!/today-in/
Perhaps find a way to commercialize it as there are quite a lot of users that have signed up already, any ideas?
Happy to also get your feedback on the most wanted features.
Perhaps find a way to commercialize it as there are quite a lot of users that have signed up already, any ideas?
Happy to also get your feedback on the most wanted features.
At a glance, really nice design, and love the name.
This may or may not be stupid, but you could curate/link to snazzy umbrellas, the most functional and most stylish.
This may or may not be stupid, but you could curate/link to snazzy umbrellas, the most functional and most stylish.
Scratching a perpetual itch by building a managed Kubernetes provider that's first and foremost cheaper, but also solve a slew of usability problems I've ran into over the years (https://symbiosis.host). Also working on plowing through the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire by Gibbon. Remains to see which project is more successful.
I'm building an attendance management app - https://tendee.co
I had a few itches to scratch:
- one off events now that fewer people are on facebook;
- planning in advance for subs in team sports;
- some work events have max capacity, so building out a wait-list
It's been a good way to play around and learn some tech I've been meaning to get around to, like NextJS and PrismaDB, but I kinda regret not giving Remix a shot.
I had a few itches to scratch:
- one off events now that fewer people are on facebook;
- planning in advance for subs in team sports;
- some work events have max capacity, so building out a wait-list
It's been a good way to play around and learn some tech I've been meaning to get around to, like NextJS and PrismaDB, but I kinda regret not giving Remix a shot.
[deleted]
One click temporary recovery of self hosted infra on the cloud. I self-host NAS and Bookstack (adding more) but my anxiety spikes whenever I leave town knowing that it could go down any time.
I'm planning to create a secure webapp hosted on S3 that would call AWS APIs to restore my backups into a graviton instance so that I don't get blocked if I'm out of town. Has to be one click, low bandwidth, and highly secure.
I'm planning to create a secure webapp hosted on S3 that would call AWS APIs to restore my backups into a graviton instance so that I don't get blocked if I'm out of town. Has to be one click, low bandwidth, and highly secure.
Finally setup my homeassistant amber I bought to finally get a decent setup where I can manage all my home automation devices in a single place with my wife and kids using it (needs to work and be simple).
Then: Getting back into more technical stuff by refreshing python and SQl skills - mostly to have more fun in my next job (trying to move from a pure Product/Program mngr role into a technical PM role/Sol Architect).
Then: Getting back into more technical stuff by refreshing python and SQl skills - mostly to have more fun in my next job (trying to move from a pure Product/Program mngr role into a technical PM role/Sol Architect).
I got an art tablet and started drawing comic style art.
Exploring opportunities at the intersection of recruiting and large language models.
As a technical recruiter, technologies like ChatGPT have the potential to save significant time [1]. It seems like the technologies are in its early days and we'll continue to see new capabilities emerge in 2023.
[1] http://recruitingcopilot.com/chatgpt
As a technical recruiter, technologies like ChatGPT have the potential to save significant time [1]. It seems like the technologies are in its early days and we'll continue to see new capabilities emerge in 2023.
[1] http://recruitingcopilot.com/chatgpt
Will continue building Unleash (https://www.getunleash.io), still a lot to do.
I reached the bottom of the page without getting a good understanding of what Unleash is. Is it something that deploys applications ? Something that pushes settings to applications ? Something that applications pull settings from ? An agent that runs on servers ? A load balancer (or API gateway) ?
It's basically feature flags on Steroids, provided as an (REST) API (at least that's how I got to know it).
Working on an evidence-based 8-week intervention around values & meaning-making in the style of MBSR:
nosmallplans.io/mindful-values
Mostly non-tech projects for me this year :)
nosmallplans.io/mindful-values
Mostly non-tech projects for me this year :)
Gooher server that connects to your WordPress site and exposes it to the phlogosphere
https://github.com/EamonnMR/gopher-wp-bridge
And my life wouldn't be complete without working on another space game
https://github.com/eamonnmr/space-craft-22
https://github.com/EamonnMR/gopher-wp-bridge
And my life wouldn't be complete without working on another space game
https://github.com/eamonnmr/space-craft-22
*Gopher
Working on building API access for health care professionals and telehealth globally and across the US. Set up a full end to end solution to access both doctors + tech in a day. https://www.medcase.health/
Happy to help any startups or companies in the health care space shoot me a message :)
Starting a startup doing AI CEO as a Service. It'll begin as a personal assistant to everyone inside slack and expand out from there. We're building the first AI run company. It's called UpMortem. Watch out for us. Our first product will be free, giving you access to GPT-3 inside slack. Ping me if you want to be kept up to date about it at [email protected].
Super interesting idea, curious to see how it translates to the real world. Emailed.
I'm trying to figure out how to get a raspberry pi cluster up and running. It's my dream to get something like stable diffusion and chatGPT to run on it. https://clusterhat.com/
Will 20 1GHz CPU cores have enough omph do you think? Could I maybe get the VideoCore GPUs on the boards hooked in somehow?
I'm working on improving & scaling up my startup - https://www.hairstyleai.com
It's an app that let's you try on new hairstyles with AI technology.
Launched the MVP in November and released the full app in December.
It was well received so now my focus is on making it the best possible experience for users & doubling down on marketing.
It's an app that let's you try on new hairstyles with AI technology.
Launched the MVP in November and released the full app in December.
It was well received so now my focus is on making it the best possible experience for users & doubling down on marketing.
I'm working on building specialized, local-first/local-only editors: https://koodpad.com and experimenting with a free to use business model (https://koodpad.com/notes/why-pay/). Wish me luck :D
I launched Assetbots (https://www.assetbots.com/) last year and went through a lot of ups and downs transitioning into the "people give me money" phase of the SaaS journey.
This year I plan to go all-in on scaling customer acquisition and getting the business out of infancy and into the next level of growth.
This year I plan to go all-in on scaling customer acquisition and getting the business out of infancy and into the next level of growth.
A SaaS for SMEs focused on reducing risk and ensuring compliance in the handling of digital assets.
[1] https://dltpay.com/
[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/techstars-invests-120-000-dlt...
[1] https://dltpay.com/
[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/techstars-invests-120-000-dlt...
Working on a new MLOps tool to manage files, data, pipelines, experiments and models.
I'm writing it in Rust. Using ECS instead of OOP. Going well so far.
It's open (and alpha.) https://github.com/iesahin/xvc
Documentation: https://docs.xvc.dev
I'm writing it in Rust. Using ECS instead of OOP. Going well so far.
It's open (and alpha.) https://github.com/iesahin/xvc
Documentation: https://docs.xvc.dev
My goal for this year is to continue building (mainly Mac and iOS) apps (like Remember[1] and Franz[2]) using Racket and to help improve the language and ecosystem in any way I can.
[1]: https://remember.defn.io [2]: https://franz.defn.io
[1]: https://remember.defn.io [2]: https://franz.defn.io
In December I started a blog, inspired by posts and comments here on HN, to record various techy tips and tricks I ended up needing or using. It’s quickly turning into a list focusing on Unreal Engine 5 as the hobby project for the year is a multiplayer third person MOBA type project.
https://tinytech.tips/
https://tinytech.tips/
[deleted]
Manufacturing!
Hoping to get a handle on scaling my business, either through injection molding or just amassing a 3d printer farm; one new printer at a time.
Hoping to get a handle on scaling my business, either through injection molding or just amassing a 3d printer farm; one new printer at a time.
Python, Rich, and Textual.
The current state of development is very interesting, especially with embedded projects (bbone, rpi, jetson nano, odroid, etc.).
The current state of development is very interesting, especially with embedded projects (bbone, rpi, jetson nano, odroid, etc.).
what does rich and textual mean ?
Both are python libraries written by Will McGugan, designed to bring stylized text formatting to terminals and consoles.
https://github.com/Textualize/rich
https://github.com/Textualize/rich
[deleted]
Being organized. Planning and achieving.
This time I will succeed.
This time I will succeed.
I've been working on a site to track game purchases across a lot of the platforms, to help people manage their libraries and avoid duplicate features: https://trackmy.games/
Lots of potential places to take this in the future, so looking for ideas for more features to add!
Lots of potential places to take this in the future, so looking for ideas for more features to add!
Right now building an open source writing application (basically a Notion clone) that lets you save offline and seamlessly publish your notes/writing as websites. It's not ready yet but hoping to have minimal MVP ready within a few weeks: https://yume.fyi
I'm working on making natural-sounding text-to-speech widely available. Specifically targeting normal people, not companies/developers. It's going to start with me picking the content, but I'd like to make it possible to have pretty much any text someone finds converted into a voice that is nice to listen to.
Have you checked out descript overdub? It actually uses your own voice (cloned) for ai, and is pretty amazing. It's used by a lot of youtubers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr-k1LWYsIg
Keep learning how to catch rabbits (users)
I'll continue to go through books, docs, courses, and other resources on programming, CS, and math topics and share the best ones on https://bestresourcestolearnx.com to help people learn more effectively.
InventAI: https://inventai.xyz
This is a generative AI product. I'm building differentiating features I won't discuss yet. I'm considering a source-available license where you'd still pay a subscription for commercial use.
This is a generative AI product. I'm building differentiating features I won't discuss yet. I'm considering a source-available license where you'd still pay a subscription for commercial use.
I have created a customizable mobile app for museums and similar cultural institutions.
The app is meant as a guide through the museum and also a replacement for old audio guide hardware.
currently only in german: https://smartcompanion.app
The app is meant as a guide through the museum and also a replacement for old audio guide hardware.
currently only in german: https://smartcompanion.app
I took a break from working on my dumb Rust JIT project (lineiform) to write a safe concurrent garbage collector library (samsara) for a few months. It's mostly done now (save for figuring out good benchmarks to tell how bad it is), so I want to try working on lineiform again.
making the simplest note-taking app in the world through the lens of a small manufacturing business owner who's inherently unorganized. I've been programming on and off for my entire life, but it's never been my main thing. I'm not counting on it to become my main thing now, but with all the tools these days (django, htmx, copilot, openai mostly), it feels like I can accomplish things in my free time that I never thought possible. It's fun, keeps me in the loop, and I'd love to grow it into more than a side project. Nothing groundbreaking, just putting puzzle pieces together in the most straight forward way possible. :) wip at https://grugnotes.com
I started working on a open source cocktail management application. Had a lot of fun (re)learning api design, docker and application testing.
https://github.com/karlomikus/bar-assistant
https://github.com/karlomikus/bar-assistant
[deleted]
Continuing to grow TigYog [1]. Finishing current courses on data science and computability. Supporting new interactive courses (if you're interested in writing one, let me know!).
[1]: https://tigyog.app
[1]: https://tigyog.app
I'll be working on my own mobile proxy build: https://scrapingfish.com/blog/byo-mobile-proxy-for-web-scrap...
working on https://gitimprove.com . It is a tool to help engineering managers/vp/cto understand what is going on in their teams and improve their development process.
I'm working on a calendar syncing for multiple providers, with focus on privacy and control.
I'll keep contributing to https://benthos.dev, the data streaming processor. It's written in Go and I really enjoy making various enhancements and engaging with the community.
I'm working on a new "transpiles to TypeScript" language called Civet. It's essentially a new CoffeeScript for TypeScript.
- https://github.com/DanielXMoore/Civet
- https://github.com/DanielXMoore/Civet
Building the new writing platform I’ve been working on for the past year: https://reproof.app/. Trying to find the best ways to make writing teams more productive.
My side project! After an unplanned hiatus (I guess everything comes and go in waves) I want to be more regimented and systematic about improving it over time.
Link: https://getloaf.io/
Link: https://getloaf.io/
Working on bringing sheetshortcut alive [1] and dabbling into some new spaces around side projects, probably in the google sheet/excel area.
[1] https://sheetshortcut.com/
[1] https://sheetshortcut.com/
I’m working on growing my YouTube channel and learning more about how to become better at producing content.
https://www.youtube.com/@homelessintoronto
https://www.youtube.com/@homelessintoronto
Meditation progress tracker. Promoter and motivator tool for keeping participants engaged.
Rewriting https://20-things.com in TS and React (new frontend: https://client.20-things.com)
I'm building a "learn language from content" app. The idea is to have a dictionary of all the words the user knows and then teach the words in collections by loading music lyrics, subtitles, photos of text etc.
Is there a way for me to subscribe to updates on this? I’d love that!
It's very early stage, so I expect I'll finish v1.0 in about half a year. I have to work on my Msc project as well. I'll post it on linkedin, so you can follow me there. https://www.linkedin.com/in/petr-kube%C5%A1-a9a48212a/
I'm building software to provide better human-in-the-loop recommendations for media, content, and retail companies. I'm also keeping up with developments in machine learning, large language models, and image generation.
I am going to make prototypes of various small projects with ChatGPT or alike as the sidekick. IMO, ChatGPT is super useful for getting started with stuff without getting decision paralysed about architectural decisions.
Hoping to find something new to bring money and keep me creatively busy. Been writing ebooks for 4+ years now. Started updating them yesterday instead of embarking upon a new book - I expect this to take more than a year.
Continue implementing PICO-8 on an ESP32 platform, trying to make it into a PCB with a friend's help
https://github.com/DavidVentura/PicoPico
https://github.com/DavidVentura/PicoPico
I'm continuing working on twirrl.io. I will, at some point, get it finished.
I'm planning to work on the service for freelancers[1] and also more AI projects[2].
[1] - Freelance leads as service for freelancers and web agencies - RemoteLeads
[2] - Planning to build the world's first Photo studio using AI
[1] - Freelance leads as service for freelancers and web agencies - RemoteLeads
[2] - Planning to build the world's first Photo studio using AI
The same thing we worked on last year Pinky, trying to take over the world!
It's a different show when you revisit the opening lyrics as "one is a genius, the other's insane" and view the story as being about how Pinky is a benevolent genius who keeps his power crazed lunatic friend Brain from causing too much harm. There are flashes of his brilliance throughout that hint at it, but when you think of how a genius would live vs. how someone insane would live, it fits well.
Started playing with GPT3, and building services on top of it. I built what I believe is a compelling service (unfortunately if I monetize it, it'll probably be replaced by openAI easily)
If it is, you could get acquihired, or build an even better thing on a competing service in the future, if enough people build things on openai only to be replaced internally they'll stop supporting the api/using it and other competitors will fill that void, but as much as Microsoft is investing I think they will keep it going for indie devs because of github/tooling services they offer that they make a lot of $$ off.
Trying to persevere and get 1000 users for the first time in an app which I built.
Currently growing https://www.fetcher.page/
Currently growing https://www.fetcher.page/
This year I’m planning to do as much adventures as possible. Building more and faster. And within them do more artistic related work.
I always ignored art without understanding its part on history.
I always ignored art without understanding its part on history.
Building a privacy-friendly, self-hosted WordPress Analytics plugin: https://wplytic.com
I am working on my journey to become an Indie Hacker and currently building WordfixerBot. I hope that I can learn to be better at marketing and sales this year.
I'm working as a student who's doing some projects. I guess I'll finally end up writing more on blog posts and try and figure out my life this year
I’m working on cyber security education this year.
As for right now I’m learning more about RISC-V to see how it can be applied in a cyber security oriented teaching environment.
As for right now I’m learning more about RISC-V to see how it can be applied in a cyber security oriented teaching environment.
I'm working on a platform that connects consumer goods companies and independent sales representatives in an "Uberesque" business model.
Mastering SvelteKit on S3 & Lambda with DynamoDB as my go-to stack. Using it to build a personal PWA to manage my budgets, reminders, journal, whatever.
I’ve got two side tables in progress that I hope to wrap this month. After that I’ve got a maloof low-back chair on deck that I’m excited to start on.
Using Open Banking to make micropayments a thing: https://just-spred.com
I'll be spending my professional time working to make SONiC a practical reality for enterprise DCs.
Personally, I will be getting back to my NES emulator.
Personally, I will be getting back to my NES emulator.
[deleted]
I'm moving out and going to try and apply to a remote BA SWE course.
Might try to go for a few CompTIA+ certs.
Getting a 3D printer.
Also starting my WH40K army (mostly for painting).
Might try to go for a few CompTIA+ certs.
Getting a 3D printer.
Also starting my WH40K army (mostly for painting).
I will finally build something fun that ties in Strava data and gives myself little collectibles for bike rides.
Have a simple application I want to build also
Have a simple application I want to build also
A minimalistic Mastodon web client https://phanpy.social
Working on a database modeling tool for past year and half. Planning to do a public launch later this week. Fingers crossed!
Chedoku, a fun chess puzzle game. Try it here:
https://chedoku.com
https://chedoku.com
Last year we set out to create an ultra fast and extremely cheap Feature Flagging solution, DevCycle [1]
We pulled it off, and it has been growing and working great for those using it.
Hoping to expand it to be a deeper part of the development lifecycle, and having a deeper integrations with things such as datadog.
Depends on what devs are looking for really, but we have a base direction to start with and are going strong.
[1] https://devcycle.com
We pulled it off, and it has been growing and working great for those using it.
Hoping to expand it to be a deeper part of the development lifecycle, and having a deeper integrations with things such as datadog.
Depends on what devs are looking for really, but we have a base direction to start with and are going strong.
[1] https://devcycle.com
A DRM remover for a niche e-book vender.
Going to spend the year designing and developing some guitar effects pedals that make disturbing noises.
[deleted]
Empty km/miles challenges for the logistics field. Zero revenue optimization.
a few side projects I juggle, when have time and energy:
* 2 books underway: software performace; sci-fi comedy novel
* making a sim related to democracy and climate
* ideas for tons more but learned must practice extreme prioritization
* 2 books underway: software performace; sci-fi comedy novel
* making a sim related to democracy and climate
* ideas for tons more but learned must practice extreme prioritization
Running for city council
Meditation tracker to help people engage and focus on themselves.
Urban DJ - A fun poll for music geniuses. Wordle for music. Dixit for music.
I'd be happy to have some people from HN joining the fun https://urbanpoll.com/dj
I'd be happy to have some people from HN joining the fun https://urbanpoll.com/dj
I am building a platform for digital content creators.
Teaching my 7 year old Japanese. Wish me luck.
Central Bank Digital Currency - A new kid on the block.
Works on blockchain but very different than Bitcoin, Ethereum
I'm working on a side-project full time for at least a few months. I just finished ~4.5 years of employment and have some cash saved up. I want to create something emotionally evocative and helpful to not only me but others. I'm also kinda worn out from being in a weird environment at work for too long. So, I want to create for a while just to shake off the cobwebs and surround myself with more positive workflows.
If my project seems to be going well then I'll keep at it and, if not, then it'll become more like an artistic self-expression and less like a failed attempt at entrepreneurship. :)
I'm building a "sneaky" mental health app. It presents as if it were a modern, sci-fi take on Tamagotchi coupled with a daily self-reflection routine. It's a fledgling ant colony on an alien planet being nurtured by a personality within an orbiting satellite. The player finds themselves compelled to keep their pet alive, commit to the routine of checking in on the pet when the satellite has LOS, and a meditative journaling routing is established by blurring the pet care routine with a self-care routine of journaling and breathwork. The player goes along with all of it since they're interested in keeping their pet alive and growing and are slowly fed entertainment as a reward.
Finch App is the most likely competition in this space. The largest difference is how our audiences discover and think about us. Finch users feel they need help and seek out Finch. Finch understands this, calls attention to the needing help, and presents itself as an anxiety-free warm hug. Finch wants users to "come out of their shell" and to engage with the world. Then, Finch nudges that engagement towards self-improvement. It's great.
Untitled Ant Game users think they're fine as-is (but are underappreciating how far from the ceiling they are), frequently lean into gaming to wind-down and as a means of escapism, and are more likely to adopt concepts that make themselves feel "smart" rather than applying labels to themselves that make them feel like they need fixing. Untitled Ant Game strives to talk about mental health at a higher level of abstraction, hinting at the complexities of psychology, and allows the user to feel like they are discovering knowledge by connecting all the dots. It then provides tools to allow the user to apply their new knowledge.
I'm excited to see how I improve myself with my software and if I can touch others who might typically be reticent of adopting additional self-care habits.
I'm also excited to try and build a game, lol. Everyone who's anyone says it's a bad idea, that it's hard, and that it's not valuable. They're probably right, but sometimes you just gotta touch the hot stove for yourself to really learn. :)
Full building in public, you can find a Discord link in my bio or you can follow https://www.untitledantgame.com/ it'll update ~daily for the forseeable future. Twitch streams coming once I get my thoughts more organized.
If my project seems to be going well then I'll keep at it and, if not, then it'll become more like an artistic self-expression and less like a failed attempt at entrepreneurship. :)
I'm building a "sneaky" mental health app. It presents as if it were a modern, sci-fi take on Tamagotchi coupled with a daily self-reflection routine. It's a fledgling ant colony on an alien planet being nurtured by a personality within an orbiting satellite. The player finds themselves compelled to keep their pet alive, commit to the routine of checking in on the pet when the satellite has LOS, and a meditative journaling routing is established by blurring the pet care routine with a self-care routine of journaling and breathwork. The player goes along with all of it since they're interested in keeping their pet alive and growing and are slowly fed entertainment as a reward.
Finch App is the most likely competition in this space. The largest difference is how our audiences discover and think about us. Finch users feel they need help and seek out Finch. Finch understands this, calls attention to the needing help, and presents itself as an anxiety-free warm hug. Finch wants users to "come out of their shell" and to engage with the world. Then, Finch nudges that engagement towards self-improvement. It's great.
Untitled Ant Game users think they're fine as-is (but are underappreciating how far from the ceiling they are), frequently lean into gaming to wind-down and as a means of escapism, and are more likely to adopt concepts that make themselves feel "smart" rather than applying labels to themselves that make them feel like they need fixing. Untitled Ant Game strives to talk about mental health at a higher level of abstraction, hinting at the complexities of psychology, and allows the user to feel like they are discovering knowledge by connecting all the dots. It then provides tools to allow the user to apply their new knowledge.
I'm excited to see how I improve myself with my software and if I can touch others who might typically be reticent of adopting additional self-care habits.
I'm also excited to try and build a game, lol. Everyone who's anyone says it's a bad idea, that it's hard, and that it's not valuable. They're probably right, but sometimes you just gotta touch the hot stove for yourself to really learn. :)
Full building in public, you can find a Discord link in my bio or you can follow https://www.untitledantgame.com/ it'll update ~daily for the forseeable future. Twitch streams coming once I get my thoughts more organized.
Maps!
Killing debt, money, capitalism.
Birthing a donation-driven carnival circuit dedicated to free public unlicensed group play therapy, not entertainment, structured to apply evolutionary graph theory in a way as to experiment with strong amplification of natural selection in evolving cultures.
Starting the Moon Thoth Arkestra.
a.i driven hedge fund
AWS certifications.
An app for quickly and collaboratively drawing maps for tabletop RPGs.
I run a tabletop RPG for some friends over the Internet using Roll20. As a player in other (in-person) games, there have been times where we've collaboratively made a map as we've gone along rather than the GM providing one, and I wanted to be able to provide a similar experience for my players. Since we found Roll20 didn't really work for this use case, I'm cobbling together an app that tries to make the experience as fluid as possible. It's only really intended for my group when I'll be on hand to explain how it works and I'll be the only one deploying it, so the docs are somewhat sparse, but in case anyone is interested:
https://github.com/mwilliamson/ttrpg-map-sketcher
I've also been working on a compiler for the most boring programming language in the world: https://github.com/mwilliamson/clunk
I maintain a library with ports to multiple languages (JavaScript, Python, Java). They have very similar structure, which means doing the same thing in pretty much the same way three times each time I make a change.
The idea I wanted to test with my language is: is it possible to extract a common subset that compiles into reasonably idiomatic code for those target languages? The compiled interfaces should be sensible (i.e. use of the code from the target language should be as good as if written in the target language directly), while implementations can be a little less tidy, but ultimately still readable and easily refactorable if the user ever decides to eject from my language and write everything in the target language(s) instead.
I doubt I'll ever use it in anger, and since it's nowhere near ready for use of any kind there aren't really any docs. In the unlikely event someone is interested, the most illuminating thing to look at would be the very beginnings of the reimplementation of the aforementioned library. Since I use snapshot testing with examples, you can see the source code, generated code and result of running the compiled test suite in one file:
Java: https://github.com/mwilliamson/clunk/blob/main/snapshots/%5B... Python: https://github.com/mwilliamson/clunk/blob/main/snapshots/%5B... TypeScript: https://github.com/mwilliamson/clunk/blob/main/snapshots/%5B...
I run a tabletop RPG for some friends over the Internet using Roll20. As a player in other (in-person) games, there have been times where we've collaboratively made a map as we've gone along rather than the GM providing one, and I wanted to be able to provide a similar experience for my players. Since we found Roll20 didn't really work for this use case, I'm cobbling together an app that tries to make the experience as fluid as possible. It's only really intended for my group when I'll be on hand to explain how it works and I'll be the only one deploying it, so the docs are somewhat sparse, but in case anyone is interested:
https://github.com/mwilliamson/ttrpg-map-sketcher
I've also been working on a compiler for the most boring programming language in the world: https://github.com/mwilliamson/clunk
I maintain a library with ports to multiple languages (JavaScript, Python, Java). They have very similar structure, which means doing the same thing in pretty much the same way three times each time I make a change.
The idea I wanted to test with my language is: is it possible to extract a common subset that compiles into reasonably idiomatic code for those target languages? The compiled interfaces should be sensible (i.e. use of the code from the target language should be as good as if written in the target language directly), while implementations can be a little less tidy, but ultimately still readable and easily refactorable if the user ever decides to eject from my language and write everything in the target language(s) instead.
I doubt I'll ever use it in anger, and since it's nowhere near ready for use of any kind there aren't really any docs. In the unlikely event someone is interested, the most illuminating thing to look at would be the very beginnings of the reimplementation of the aforementioned library. Since I use snapshot testing with examples, you can see the source code, generated code and result of running the compiled test suite in one file:
Java: https://github.com/mwilliamson/clunk/blob/main/snapshots/%5B... Python: https://github.com/mwilliamson/clunk/blob/main/snapshots/%5B... TypeScript: https://github.com/mwilliamson/clunk/blob/main/snapshots/%5B...
i’m trying a few small apps/websites while consulting part time. my first attempt is https://hourly.fyi which is levels.fyi for freelancers/consultants/etc.
It’s basically in it’s MVP form right now but have been overhauling it over the holidays. Excited for the re-release :D
It’s basically in it’s MVP form right now but have been overhauling it over the holidays. Excited for the re-release :D