5 ms·

Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

13 points by pea 3y ago

kjok 3y ago
Funding FOSS projects has been a challenge; donations help, but not enough. I believe that FOSS maintainers can gain financial independence and sustain their projects by "selling" supply-chain security assurance to consumers on software contents, packaging, etc. I'm building a marketplace that would enable this. I'm looking for FOSS devs to signup/provide feedback.
mtmail 3y ago
A project involving Postgres/PostGIS raster tables https://postgis.net/workshops/postgis-intro/rasters.html https://postgis.net/workshops/postgis-intro/rasters.html Usually I only deal with geometries (polygons, vectors) so being able to merge rasters on top of each other, look at pixel values and joining rasters with other geometry data is new to me. When I look at help pages (stackoverflow) it's often people who work with satellite imagery data.
d--b 3y ago
I am writing a screenplay. A comedy. The bad guy is inspired by Sam Altman. I don't know if it qualifies as cool, but I'm more excited than when I was working on BI tools.
- syncbehind 3y ago
  That's super cool! Will you share it when you're done?
  - d--b 3y ago
    Hopefully, I can sell it!
JunaidBhai 3y ago
I'm working on https://abun.com https://abun.com, a tool that would get you ranked on Google without lifting a finger. It's still not right there where I'd want it to be. Trying to push those features as fast as I can.
- whodev 3y ago
  I'm sure this is "normal" industry practice (not like I'd know since I've never tried doing SEO), but having a service that just uses AI to generate articles/blog posts for you just so you can have a better SEO rank seems, unpleasant. I just don't like that people and businesses are using AI to create articles about "choosing the right video editing software" just for better SEO ranking.
  - JunaidBhai 3y ago
    At present one can just submit a topic to ChatGPT and generate an entire article on their own. But that's not sufficient enough to fit the parameters of E-E-A-T which helps rank your page/post on Google. In the above example, you are correct it would not be as relevant as it should be. But in cases like How to achieve X, it would be more relevant or maybe where a visitor is just trying to understand a subject that has nothing to do with listing brand names. I am trying to tap into long-tail keywords that can help rank quickly rather than the Listicle articles. Apart from that I'm also trying to customize different types of articles based on our current users who are sharing feedbacks. May I ask if you have created blog posts which drives traffic? Do you realistically feel that as a founder have invest time into writing articles all by yourself consistently everyday for your website? In my experience, you really do not get that amount of time to dedicate for Blog generation & SEO. This has been the same problem with me as well. So if AI could help you achieve some part of it, why not leverage it to start driving organic traffic.
- xu3u32 3y ago
  The funny thing is that abun.com only ranks for two keywords according to KeySearch. "blog ai writer" and "abun", with "blog ai writer" bringing 260 visits a month. If the tool worked so well, I would have guessed that you would be dominating SERPs. Good luck destroying the web, Junaid Bhai!
  - JunaidBhai 3y ago
    That's correct. It has been less than a month since I have started publishing blog articles on Abun. It would take a few months for blogs to start ranking on Google which will gradually improve in ranking over the course of time. The idea is not to write just any articles, but rather the ones that suit your industry targeting your ideal customer profile. This ensures that whatever users come to your website were searching for that specific term & would find relevant content on your blog. This is currently even possible using ChatGPT. The user will have to use the generated article & manually add parameters of E-E-A-T which will also start ranking on Google. I am just trying to automate it so that you do not have to invest time doing that manually.
aminmemon 3y ago
Helping startups & businesses get Design, Motion Graphic, WordPress & Webflow Team without going through hiring & contract hassles. https://draftss.com https://draftss.com > Own a Team on a subscription basis. No hiring contracts, cancel any time.
rozenmd 3y ago
Most folks here are probably tired of hearing about it, but I work on https://onlineornot.com https://onlineornot.com Uptime monitoring (and status pages) for software teams. In my words, the aim is "monitoring that doesn't suck" - I've worked at companies with proactive monitoring like OnlineOrNot before, and was surprised how little the incumbents are innovating in the space. One customer once told me "f*k <vendor>, all their system ever did was alert us when we weren't down". I've built a decent frontend for configuring uptime checks and status pages, now I'm working on a self-documenting (OpenAPI, rolled it myself: https://developers.onlineornot.com/ https://developers.onlineornot.com/) API that'll let folks use terraform (or even just the API itself) to setup their uptime checks, cron job monitoring, status pages, even their teams.
remyp 3y ago
Over my last few programming jobs I've felt that building software these days usually amounts to drudgery in the short term and burnout in the long-term. I'm building a product [0] to fix that. It helps engineering leaders gather candid feedback to identify and improve quality of life problems in their teams. Think employee pulse surveys, but purpose-built for dev teams. It's cool not because the tech is interesting (it isn't) but because the product helps improve the working lives of actual human beings. Working on a company that's calm, deliberate, and fully independent has been a breath of fresh air for my career in tech. [0] https://workdna.com https://workdna.com
mikewarot 3y ago
The BitGrid[1,2] - a novel model of computation, similar to Turing machines in simplicity, except the parallel execution model allows for PetaFlops of performance in a small efficient package, I hope. I bought a FPGA board to try learn Verilog and hopefully get enough knowledge to do a TinyTapeout of a minimal chip. Once I know how much energy it takes to run a cell of 4 - 4x4 LUTs and 4 D latches, I can realistically figure out if the thing is worth doing, or not. MStoical - A fork^2 of the STOIC language, I'm considering scrapping the C version and just going with Pascal, so I can get quick and easy gigabyte string handling. For now, however, it remains in C, OLD C, apparently. [1] https://github.com/mikewarot/Bitgrid https://github.com/mikewarot/Bitgrid [2] https://esolangs.org/wiki/Bitgrid https://esolangs.org/wiki/Bitgrid [3] https://github.com/mikewarot/mstoical https://github.com/mikewarot/mstoical
firedating 3y ago
https://firedating.me/ https://firedating.me/ - the first and only dating website for FIRE (Financial Independence / Retire Early) community. It is cool, because it dramatically affects people lives, e.g. I am aware of multiple couples marrying as a result of meeting through the site. Looking forward to FireDating babies :)
- solardev 3y ago
  Hey, can I ask what makes it FIRE-y? Like do you do income validation? Or is more a matter of your profile questions (as seen on https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V_10Y8OtQt7b73-GwVoq_edrjsWYrHQW/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V_10Y8OtQt7b73-GwVoq_edrjsW...)? Asking for a friend who's not really all that interested in dating, but IS very interested in FIRE. Maybe this will get her looking...
  - firedating 3y ago
    1) people - everyone knows what FIRE is and more financially minded than an average person 2) profile questions - some are FIRE related and can matter greatly for FIRE folks, e.g. fat vs lean FIRE 3) design - no swiping, incentivizing talking to people today instead of waiting for a perfect match
    - solardev 3y ago
      Cool, thanks! I'll have to suggest this the next time I talk to her.
    - vram22 3y ago
      What is 'swiping' in this context?
      - solardev 3y ago
        In most dating apps these days (especially after Match Group bought most of them), you're shown one potential date after another and swipe across your phone to either indicate interest (say yes) or pass them by (rejecting them). Typically I think you swipe left to ignore them or right to indicate interest. But it's been a while and I could be wrong about that.
meowtastic 3y ago
https://tiktokexamples.com https://tiktokexamples.com - website collecting TikTok case studies. It's my first attempt at a non-SaaS product, I'm really curious how it's gonna turn out.
- is_true 3y ago
  what are your plans to monetize this?
  - meowtastic 3y ago
    Ads. I've seen other people do it with similar ideas, and it sure beats slogging away for 6 months on another SaaS for me.
    - is_true 3y ago
      thanks. good luck!
wannabebarista 3y ago
I've been reading and writing about research from 100, 150, and 200 years ago roughly covering math, economics, and philosophy. It's cool because it can help people find interesting things to read or give an idea of what was going on at the time. Here's my post on 1873: https://bcmullins.github.io/research-from-1873/ https://bcmullins.github.io/research-from-1873/.
- chatmasta 3y ago
  I've always liked those Twitter accounts that are narrating "$HISTORICAL_EVENT in real time" by simply reposting updates from that event, but N years later. It really adds some perspective to history when you can watch it unfold on a daily basis rather than consuming it in its condensed form.
margor 3y ago
I don't have a website yet, but I recently hooked myself up to work on yet another CI/CD solution. Hear me out before you say "booring!". What if you could migrate to a CI/CD that is better to fit your organization _without_ changing any existing definitions? What if your new fancy CI/CD could support your existing github-actions/bitbucket pipelines/circleci.yml definitions right out of the box? And what if you could progressively migrate to some new/other format that fits your needs better without having to create multi-year organization wide migration to the "new and better CI"™, only to do it _yet again_ once vendor goes out of business? So that's my idea. I admit, the endeavor is really big, since supporting multiple formats which often don't have direct equivalents between each other seems like a really hard thing to do. But I strongly believe this is real problem, because according to my n=1 experience, every organization sooner or later faces this challenge, and the fact that all vendors force you to migrate to their custom format for defining, what is essentially a DAG of tasks is outrageous to me.

13 points by pea 3y ago

kjok 3y ago

Funding FOSS projects has been a challenge; donations help, but not enough. I believe that FOSS maintainers can gain financial independence and sustain their projects by "selling" supply-chain security assurance to consumers on software contents, packaging, etc. I'm building a marketplace that would enable this. I'm looking for FOSS devs to signup/provide feedback.

mtmail 3y ago

A project involving Postgres/PostGIS raster tables https://postgis.net/workshops/postgis-intro/rasters.html https://postgis.net/workshops/postgis-intro/rasters.html Usually I only deal with geometries (polygons, vectors) so being able to merge rasters on top of each other, look at pixel values and joining rasters with other geometry data is new to me. When I look at help pages (stackoverflow) it's often people who work with satellite imagery data.

d--b 3y ago

I am writing a screenplay. A comedy. The bad guy is inspired by Sam Altman. I don't know if it qualifies as cool, but I'm more excited than when I was working on BI tools.

syncbehind 3y ago
That's super cool! Will you share it when you're done?
- d--b 3y ago
  Hopefully, I can sell it!

JunaidBhai 3y ago

I'm working on https://abun.com https://abun.com, a tool that would get you ranked on Google without lifting a finger. It's still not right there where I'd want it to be. Trying to push those features as fast as I can.

whodev 3y ago
I'm sure this is "normal" industry practice (not like I'd know since I've never tried doing SEO), but having a service that just uses AI to generate articles/blog posts for you just so you can have a better SEO rank seems, unpleasant. I just don't like that people and businesses are using AI to create articles about "choosing the right video editing software" just for better SEO ranking.
- JunaidBhai 3y ago
  At present one can just submit a topic to ChatGPT and generate an entire article on their own. But that's not sufficient enough to fit the parameters of E-E-A-T which helps rank your page/post on Google. In the above example, you are correct it would not be as relevant as it should be. But in cases like How to achieve X, it would be more relevant or maybe where a visitor is just trying to understand a subject that has nothing to do with listing brand names. I am trying to tap into long-tail keywords that can help rank quickly rather than the Listicle articles. Apart from that I'm also trying to customize different types of articles based on our current users who are sharing feedbacks. May I ask if you have created blog posts which drives traffic? Do you realistically feel that as a founder have invest time into writing articles all by yourself consistently everyday for your website? In my experience, you really do not get that amount of time to dedicate for Blog generation & SEO. This has been the same problem with me as well. So if AI could help you achieve some part of it, why not leverage it to start driving organic traffic.
xu3u32 3y ago
The funny thing is that abun.com only ranks for two keywords according to KeySearch. "blog ai writer" and "abun", with "blog ai writer" bringing 260 visits a month. If the tool worked so well, I would have guessed that you would be dominating SERPs. Good luck destroying the web, Junaid Bhai!
- JunaidBhai 3y ago
  That's correct. It has been less than a month since I have started publishing blog articles on Abun. It would take a few months for blogs to start ranking on Google which will gradually improve in ranking over the course of time. The idea is not to write just any articles, but rather the ones that suit your industry targeting your ideal customer profile. This ensures that whatever users come to your website were searching for that specific term & would find relevant content on your blog. This is currently even possible using ChatGPT. The user will have to use the generated article & manually add parameters of E-E-A-T which will also start ranking on Google. I am just trying to automate it so that you do not have to invest time doing that manually.

aminmemon 3y ago

Helping startups & businesses get Design, Motion Graphic, WordPress & Webflow Team without going through hiring & contract hassles. https://draftss.com https://draftss.com > Own a Team on a subscription basis. No hiring contracts, cancel any time.

rozenmd 3y ago

Most folks here are probably tired of hearing about it, but I work on https://onlineornot.com https://onlineornot.com Uptime monitoring (and status pages) for software teams. In my words, the aim is "monitoring that doesn't suck" - I've worked at companies with proactive monitoring like OnlineOrNot before, and was surprised how little the incumbents are innovating in the space. One customer once told me "f*k <vendor>, all their system ever did was alert us when we weren't down". I've built a decent frontend for configuring uptime checks and status pages, now I'm working on a self-documenting (OpenAPI, rolled it myself: https://developers.onlineornot.com/ https://developers.onlineornot.com/) API that'll let folks use terraform (or even just the API itself) to setup their uptime checks, cron job monitoring, status pages, even their teams.

remyp 3y ago

Over my last few programming jobs I've felt that building software these days usually amounts to drudgery in the short term and burnout in the long-term. I'm building a product [0] to fix that. It helps engineering leaders gather candid feedback to identify and improve quality of life problems in their teams. Think employee pulse surveys, but purpose-built for dev teams. It's cool not because the tech is interesting (it isn't) but because the product helps improve the working lives of actual human beings. Working on a company that's calm, deliberate, and fully independent has been a breath of fresh air for my career in tech. [0] https://workdna.com https://workdna.com

mikewarot 3y ago

The BitGrid[1,2] - a novel model of computation, similar to Turing machines in simplicity, except the parallel execution model allows for PetaFlops of performance in a small efficient package, I hope. I bought a FPGA board to try learn Verilog and hopefully get enough knowledge to do a TinyTapeout of a minimal chip. Once I know how much energy it takes to run a cell of 4 - 4x4 LUTs and 4 D latches, I can realistically figure out if the thing is worth doing, or not. MStoical - A fork^2 of the STOIC language, I'm considering scrapping the C version and just going with Pascal, so I can get quick and easy gigabyte string handling. For now, however, it remains in C, OLD C, apparently. [1] https://github.com/mikewarot/Bitgrid https://github.com/mikewarot/Bitgrid [2] https://esolangs.org/wiki/Bitgrid https://esolangs.org/wiki/Bitgrid [3] https://github.com/mikewarot/mstoical https://github.com/mikewarot/mstoical

firedating 3y ago

https://firedating.me/ https://firedating.me/ - the first and only dating website for FIRE (Financial Independence / Retire Early) community. It is cool, because it dramatically affects people lives, e.g. I am aware of multiple couples marrying as a result of meeting through the site. Looking forward to FireDating babies :)

solardev 3y ago
Hey, can I ask what makes it FIRE-y? Like do you do income validation? Or is more a matter of your profile questions (as seen on https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V_10Y8OtQt7b73-GwVoq_edrjsWYrHQW/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V_10Y8OtQt7b73-GwVoq_edrjsW...)? Asking for a friend who's not really all that interested in dating, but IS very interested in FIRE. Maybe this will get her looking...
- firedating 3y ago
  1) people - everyone knows what FIRE is and more financially minded than an average person 2) profile questions - some are FIRE related and can matter greatly for FIRE folks, e.g. fat vs lean FIRE 3) design - no swiping, incentivizing talking to people today instead of waiting for a perfect match
  - solardev 3y ago
    Cool, thanks! I'll have to suggest this the next time I talk to her.
  - vram22 3y ago
    What is 'swiping' in this context?
    - solardev 3y ago
      In most dating apps these days (especially after Match Group bought most of them), you're shown one potential date after another and swipe across your phone to either indicate interest (say yes) or pass them by (rejecting them). Typically I think you swipe left to ignore them or right to indicate interest. But it's been a while and I could be wrong about that.

meowtastic 3y ago

https://tiktokexamples.com https://tiktokexamples.com - website collecting TikTok case studies. It's my first attempt at a non-SaaS product, I'm really curious how it's gonna turn out.

is_true 3y ago
what are your plans to monetize this?
- meowtastic 3y ago
  Ads. I've seen other people do it with similar ideas, and it sure beats slogging away for 6 months on another SaaS for me.
  - is_true 3y ago
    thanks. good luck!

wannabebarista 3y ago

I've been reading and writing about research from 100, 150, and 200 years ago roughly covering math, economics, and philosophy. It's cool because it can help people find interesting things to read or give an idea of what was going on at the time. Here's my post on 1873: https://bcmullins.github.io/research-from-1873/ https://bcmullins.github.io/research-from-1873/.

chatmasta 3y ago
I've always liked those Twitter accounts that are narrating "$HISTORICAL_EVENT in real time" by simply reposting updates from that event, but N years later. It really adds some perspective to history when you can watch it unfold on a daily basis rather than consuming it in its condensed form.

margor 3y ago

I don't have a website yet, but I recently hooked myself up to work on yet another CI/CD solution. Hear me out before you say "booring!". What if you could migrate to a CI/CD that is better to fit your organization _without_ changing any existing definitions? What if your new fancy CI/CD could support your existing github-actions/bitbucket pipelines/circleci.yml definitions right out of the box? And what if you could progressively migrate to some new/other format that fits your needs better without having to create multi-year organization wide migration to the "new and better CI"™, only to do it _yet again_ once vendor goes out of business? So that's my idea. I admit, the endeavor is really big, since supporting multiple formats which often don't have direct equivalents between each other seems like a really hard thing to do. But I strongly believe this is real problem, because according to my n=1 experience, every organization sooner or later faces this challenge, and the fact that all vendors force you to migrate to their custom format for defining, what is essentially a DAG of tasks is outrageous to me.