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Ask HN: What are you working on?

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Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#471

Post by opticfluorine »

bbbobbb wrote: post #423
opticfluorine wrote: post #95

In my free time I've been working on a 2D MMORPG engine in C#. I'm working on the networking code right now, working toward being able to connect and move around the game world. I'm enjoying the network code, but I'm really looking forward to getting back to shader code and implementing dynamic lighting at some point down the road. Wanting to build an MMORPG was the main thing that got me interested in software devel…

Nice! I am somewhat surprised how there are no modern 2D MMORPGs. It seems like it should be inherently easier to develop those, but there is nothing. I think it's a pity because simpler engine / graphics should allows for more resources to be spent on other areas regarding the gameplay. Maybe those games just aren't popular enough to justify the development in comparison to bland but flashy 3D games..

I think you might be right about the popularity. Major commercial MMOs are deriving revenue from either subscriptions or microtransactions, with the latter becoming much more common (and requiring a far larger userbase to maintain profitability). The trend toward "bland but flashy 3D" has been around for a long time now, so it makes sense in my mind.

About ~ 15 years ago there were quite a few 2D MMO engines freely available, mostly written in VB6. The two big ones were ORE (a very basic FOSS project that didn't support much beyond logging in and walking around) and the Mirage family of engines (closed source, but was licensed and forked quite a few times, most notably into the Playerworlds engine). The various Mirage engines, especially Playerworlds, really lowered the barrier to creating MMOs, and consequently there were quite a few indie "MMOs" with userbases of ~ 50 - 100 regular players.

I know of at least one other FOSS engine project out there (Lunar Engine, which is much further along than my own) besides mine. My hope is that if a few easy-to-use engines are made available and promoted well, another community will form around these 2D indie MMOs. So we'll see what happens.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#472

Post by [deleted] »

yjhoney wrote: post #181

I'm writing a book that teaches people coding using JavaScript, the book that takes you from 0 (no coding background) to getting a job as a JS engineer. 2 years I ago, I had a hypothesis to see if anybody could learn coding if they tried. To test that, I reached out to random people with no coding background, most of them from underprivileged backgrounds. I figured they have fewer opportunities and are more likely to…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#473

Post by taneq »

andreigheorghe wrote: post #459
taneq wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2 years I ago, I had a hypothesis to see if anybody could learn coding if they tried. To test that, I reached out to random people with no coding background, most of them from underprivileged backgrounds. I figured they have fewer opportunities and are more likely to stay through the entire program. 17 of them stayed. You're missing some numbers at the start there, chief. How many people did you reach out to? How m…

> Without these numbers it's hard to support your premise. His premise is that "anybody could learn coding if they tried", whereby "tried" I assumed applies to only the people who passed those two rounds of self-selection you describe.

That's kind of like saying "anyone can run a marathon" and then qualifying it to "if they enter an organized event and complete the appropriate training for it".

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#474

Post by emckay »

richajak wrote: post #347
emckay wrote: post #336

I quit my job last month to work full time on (what I think is) an under-explored area of climate change: how institutional investors block shareholder proposals calling for firms to adopt more climate-friendly policies. I have just published the first bit of research with data on how 500+ funds from the big 3 fund managers voted on climate change-related proposals in 2018: https://voting.greengovernance.org . Later…

Some ideas -Which consumer product companies still use a lot of plastic packaging vs those already use bio-degradable packaging? -Which heavy-industry manufacturing companies use coal or diesel as the main source of energy in their factories vs those use renewable energy source? -Any company forbid their executives to fly excessively whether in private jet or business/first class? How many miles per year they travel…

Thanks! Those are all interesting questions -- and also quite hard to answer without a lot of research into each individual company.

One thing my fund will push for is more consistent and granular emissions disclosures across firms so that shareholders have a better idea of where firms are "spending" their emissions and identify inefficiencies.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#475

Post by emckay »

JasonSage wrote: post #374
emckay wrote: post #336

I quit my job last month to work full time on (what I think is) an under-explored area of climate change: how institutional investors block shareholder proposals calling for firms to adopt more climate-friendly policies. I have just published the first bit of research with data on how 500+ funds from the big 3 fund managers voted on climate change-related proposals in 2018: https://voting.greengovernance.org . Later…

Is there somewhere one could follow your work for updates?

You can sign up for our email newsletter at https://tinyletter.com/GreenGovernance or follow on Twitter https://twitter.com/GreenGovernance

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#476

Post by twodave »

richajak wrote: post #301
twodave wrote: post #233

1. API to extract and store metadata about an uploaded PDF (images, relevant field locations, signature boxes, etc.) 2. Tool that shows an image of each field to the user and allows them to enter human readable prompts (title, description, input style). 3. A PWA that uses the prompts to help an end user complete the form, collects signatures, etc. 4. Add the ability to link/upload some tabular data and tie fields fro…

That's cool. I was working on something similar, extracting tabular data from PDF for the last 2 weeks. Curious about your method, as the process (e.g. to detect the coordinate of the header/footer fields, etc) is very manual and specific for each PDF template. Do you happen to encounter the same challenge? If yes, how do solve it, use machine learning? heuristics? etc?

Well for now it is only attempting to read FDF or XFA forms, for which the metadata is pretty readily accessible. The tool will probably include a way to manually add/remove fields as well, but detecting form fields from basically an image is a level of awesomeness I have not yet set as a goal haha.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#477

Post by jcims »

namibj wrote: post #427
jcims wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am planning a new building on my property and really would love to have something like this to visualize it from different angles on the driveway, back porch, etc.

I understand you want to visualize the current state? And have a free camera you can move around the scene? If so, this should be able to do it. If you can get your hands on a camera with electronic global shutter and more than 1080p, I'd offer you processing in exchange for being able to later use the data for testing / tuning some of the more recent multi-view stereo algorithms (well, their implementations). Contac…

Whoa this is an awesome offer, thank you! I'm arranging for some oblique and overhead shots around the property, will hit you up once they are available to see if it makes sense to give it a go. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#478

Post by gradschool »

I recently finished writing a book about asynchronous circuit design and set up the landing page for it [1]. It's my first crack at modern-ish web technologies, using bootstrap for the front end and making it serverless on AWS S3 with a couple of lambda functions written in go for the back end [2] [3]. I'm getting to grips payment processing and book printing but giving the ebook away free.

[1] http://www.delayinsensitive.com

[2] https://github.com/gueststar/s3quota

[3] https://github.com/gueststar/lumberjack

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#479

Post by totoglazer »

emckay wrote: post #336

I quit my job last month to work full time on (what I think is) an under-explored area of climate change: how institutional investors block shareholder proposals calling for firms to adopt more climate-friendly policies. I have just published the first bit of research with data on how 500+ funds from the big 3 fund managers voted on climate change-related proposals in 2018: https://voting.greengovernance.org . Later…

I think this is great! I’ve moved money from VTSAX to Vanguard’s ESG funds, despite big concerns about their governance voting. There’s nothing inherently incompatible about climate friendly voting and index funds, so I wish you the best of luck.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#480

Post by namibj »

jcims wrote: post #477
namibj wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand you want to visualize the current state? And have a free camera you can move around the scene? If so, this should be able to do it. If you can get your hands on a camera with electronic global shutter and more than 1080p, I'd offer you processing in exchange for being able to later use the data for testing / tuning some of the more recent multi-view stereo algorithms (well, their implementations). Contac…

Whoa this is an awesome offer, thank you! I'm arranging for some oblique and overhead shots around the property, will hit you up once they are available to see if it makes sense to give it a go. Thanks!

If you want good results, I'd advise considering needs of photogrammetry before the day you take the photos. I just don't want to post a public link to the example I mentioned.

Depending on how you take those shots/arrange for them there might be tricks to get (closer to) certain goals.

Feel free to mail me some questions regarding the shots/arrangements you mention.

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