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Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on

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Re: Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on

#371

Post by gavinhoward »

eternityforest wrote: post #321
gavinhoward wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I need feedback on the language. But to do so, people kinda want to be able to try it. I'm still getting it into a demo-ready state. Since my VCS will be all-in-one, yes, it will have a GitHub equivalent. In fact, it will be more of a Gitea equivalent because anyone could spin one up. But I'm not worried about beating git (yet) because the use case for binary tracking is assets for movies and games, and movies…

Do you have a random bullet points lost or example code for what the language should look like? Taking on perforce seems more reasonable than git at first for sure.

Old version of the example file is at https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/branch/master/src/yao/exa... .

It's old because I had to stop pushing new commits to that repo until I got my new license approved by a lawyer. I have almost 700 commits since then, several of which update the example file.

But the gist of the language is still the same.

Re: Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on

#372

Post by boricj »

I've been working on a specific reverse-engineering technique called unlinking [1] on-and-off for the past 16 months or so. I'm on my third prototype (first a set of Ghidra scripts written in Jython [2], then a fork of Ghidra [3] and now a Ghidra extension [4]) and I've started a blog in order to document it [5], which side-tracked into writing a whole series of articles on reverse-engineering to introduce the topic.

What for, you may ask? Basically I'm trying to decompile a PlayStation 1 video game and I've quickly decided that dealing alone with multiple +500 KiB executables of complete utter spaghetti code wasn't going to work. Instead, I've decided that I'd rather divide-and-conquer the problem, so I've been tooling up to split executables into relocatable object files, in order to decompile those one at a time and Ship of Theseus-style my way to success.

Ironically, all of that stuff is so not done that I don't even know what meaningful feedback there could be. My prototypes do work, but only for 32 bit little endian statically-linked MIPS executables. The articles on my blog are draft-quality. As for the decompilation project itself that started all of this, it hasn't seen much progress due to all of those side-quests. The overall topic is so esoteric that so far I've only managed to hear about one group of two persons that tried to do anything remotely similar and one another anecdotal account [6] suggesting that this particular skill is very uncommon among reverse engineers.

Personally, I'm starting to think that maybe I could've actually reverse-engineered and decompiled the game in the time I took to get here. I've also tried to engage with Ghidra to upstream the foundations of my modifications in my fork, but after some back-and-forth it became clear that my prototype-grade stuff wasn't industrial-grade and couldn't be merged in its current state, which is why I'm currently reworking the code in my fork as a Ghidra extension.

To those that want to provide feedback after reading all of this: beware, I've had a lot of fun going down that rabbit hole, but this is one hell of a time sink and a particularly tricky mind-bender.

[1] I don't actually know what's the actual name for this technique, given that there are so few resources on it out there. I do know I didn't invent it.

[2] https://github.com/boricj/ghidra-unlinker-scripts

[3] https://github.com/boricj/ghidra/tree/feature/elfrelocateble...

[4] https://github.com/boricj/ghidra-unlinker-extension

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36575081#36590078

[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35729232&p=3#35740761

Re: Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on

#373

Post by codeapprove »

pkd wrote: post #366
codeapprove wrote: post #35

Is it too developed if it’s in private alpha? Anyway … I’ve been working on CodeApprove ( https://codeapprove.com ) for a while because I think code review is the biggest shortcoming of GitHub. The idea is to make a code review tool for power users. Just like you have an editor that makes you productive at writing and reading code, you should have a review app that makes you and your team productive at reviewing it.…

I agree that a better tool is needed! I like all the improvements you are selling the tool on, but one of my biggest gripes with code review experiences has been the inability to specify the ordering of the files in the diff. Most people look at the diffs from top to bottom by default, and I sometimes have my questions answered when I move down in a diff. It would be so much better for the author to be able to select…

Oh do you mean allowing the author to select the order? That's a very cool idea!

Re: Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on

#374

Post by LudicrousSpeed »

_gabe_ wrote: post #284
xcdzvyn wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember watching the video you made on it[0] and was thoroughly impressed! Small world. I had an application for this recently but the name made it hard to find :( [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iydG-e1dQGA

Ah thanks! And yea, naming things has never been a strength for me. I’ll have to come up with something more memorable once it’s ready for an alpha release :)

AniMath?

Re: Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on

#375

Post by Soupy »

i-am-gizm0 wrote: post #324
Soupy wrote: post #24

https://pastmaps.com Been working on this as a new way to find, explore, and view old historical maps and aerials of my area. Still heavily in development but have been surprised by some early traffic stats (1-2K organic uniques / mo and growing 200%+ m/m right now) Hoping to add in more advanced map tooling within the next week or 2, including new basemap options, 3d terrain view, and then a proper search box which…

I love it! A suggestion for much further down the line: a timeline on the map which composites many maps from a similar time period so you can see them all stitched together (somewhat like how https://skyvector.com/ stitches together multiple sectional charts into a continuous map, though I know it can't be as seamless). Or you could attempt to run some extra processing steps to warp the map to match the background m…

Very doable, these are called mosaics in the GIS world and it's actually not that crazy to do

Really love this suggestion, I could see it making map exploration far easier since now you just need to explore by year instead of by map and by year (reducing dimensionality by 1!). Thank you, I'm going to chew on this a bit more but I really think there's something here

Re: Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on

#376

Post by eternityforest »

gavinhoward wrote: post #371
eternityforest wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a random bullet points lost or example code for what the language should look like? Taking on perforce seems more reasonable than git at first for sure.

Old version of the example file is at https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/branch/master/src/yao/exa... . It's old because I had to stop pushing new commits to that repo until I got my new license approved by a lawyer. I have almost 700 commits since then, several of which update the example file. But the gist of the language is still the same.

My initial thoughts(I'm not a "language guy" so I don't pay much attention to languages outside the billion dollar ones).

* Is it gonna stay AGPL? Will people use it? * I like the integration with shell. Largely because I hate actually coding in shell and this could be a cool replacement. * Overall it looks pretty cool. I'd probably enjoy coding in it more than C * it seems to have a handwritten lexer and parser? * The mutator operator is cool * I'm not the biggest fan of englishlike "push x onto y" * I like the context stacks, I don't quite like having special builtin one with no distinguishing feature or namespace in the name * Function suffixes are neat but a bit too odd for me But I don't think I'd want to use anything "Indie" in production anywhere, and AGPL might scare off people so it never becomes a mainstream corporate backed thing, right?

Seems like you'd have to really carefully make sure it fits the audience who enjoys using indie stuff if you don't plan to get corporate backing. AI free seems like a good thing for that!

Re: Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on

#377

Post by ismokedoinks »

Soupy wrote: post #370
ismokedoinks wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really cool, makes me nostalgic for a lot of time georeferencing random maps from the library of congress or from municipal archives etc. In that same vein, you could add a feature where users could contribute georeferenced map files for community review and approval--I think that would really increase your scalability. I see you have an email for that currently.

I love love love this direction. And yea, I have a basic email but I really think a super simple upload and maybe even dead-easy georeference tool for folks to contribute data is a no-brainer! I'm bumping this up on my backlog, thank you!

Amazing, can't wait to see where you end up! Let me know if you need a hand too. I love web mapping projects--I got into programming through QGIS/leaflet on the way to a couple degrees in GIS and urban planning.

Re: Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on

#378

Post by bichiliad »

I'm working on an app called ScreenHint. It lets you take a screenshot of a bit of your screen, which then floats there above your other windows until you dismiss it. It's essentially a clone of the sadly-abandoned Snappy, if you're familiar with it. There are a lot of things I wish it could do still, but I'm worried that I'm missing some ease-of-use and polish items still. The app is free and is currently on the mac app store, but I haven't really done much to promote it yet.

https://www.screenhint.com/

Re: Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on

#379

Post by adamdecaf »

I'm building Recall Kitchen which is an aggregator to notify consumers of products they use which have been recalled. Right now I'm focusing on the effort to help users tailor notifications so they're specific and actionable. It doesn't help to be told your brand of taco shells was recalled three states over and I'm working to fine-tune the signal.

https://recallkitchen.com/

Re: Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on

#380

Post by klntsky »

janosdebugs wrote: post #342
klntsky wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How in particular do you think colors should be improved?

I think the game needs more contrast. Make the blocks that change the stream a different color and not transparent maybe?

They need to be at least partially transparent to show how the geometry changes within a prism.
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