Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate?

#501

Post by kstenerud » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 7:41 AM UTC

memling wrote: post #475

kstenerud wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's included in the comparison matrix: https://github.com/kstenerud/concise-encoding#-compared-to-o...

An interesting project! Regarding some of the ASN.1 comparison characteristics, I'm not quite sure if I understand--there's a lot to read here, and it's likely I've missed something by a lack of acquaintance with your documents/specifications. But a couple comments: - Cyclic data: ASN.1 supports recursive data structures.[0] - Time zones: ASN.1 supports ISO 8601 time types, including specification of local or UTC tim…

> - Cyclic data: ASN.1 supports recursive data structures.

Not sure if I missed something, but the link was talking about self-referential types, not self-referential data. For example (in CTE):

    &a:{
        "recursive link" = $a
    }

In the above example, `&a:` means mark the next object and give it symbolic identifier "a". `$a` means look up the reference to symbolic identifier "a". So this is a map whose "recusive link" key is a pointer to the map itself. How this data is represented internally by the receiver of such a document (a table, a dictionary, a struct, etc) is up to the implementation, but the intent is for a structure whose data points to itself.

> - Time zones: ASN.1 supports ISO 8601 time types, including specification of local or UTC time.

Yes, this is the major failing of ISO 8601: They don't have true time zones. It only uses UTC offsets, which are a bad idea for so many reasons. https://github.com/kstenerud/concise-encoding/blob/master/ce...

> - Bin + txt: Again, I'm unclear on what you mean here, but ASN.1 has both binary and text-based encodings

Ah cool, didn't know about those.

> - Versioned: Also a little unclear to me

The intent is to specify the exact document formatting that the decoder can expect. For example we could in theory decide to make CBE version 2 a bit-oriented format instead of byte-oriented in order to save space at the cost of processing time. It would be completely unreadable to a CBE 1 decoder, but since the document starts with 0x83 0x02 instead of 0x83 0x01, a CBE 1 decoder would say "I can't decode this" and a CBE 2 decoder would say "I can decode this".

With documents versioned to the spec, we can change even the fundamental structure of the format to deal with ANYTHING that might come up in future. Maybe a new security flaw in CBE 1 is discovered. Maybe a new data type becomes so popular that it would be crazy not to include it, etc. This avoids polluting the simpler encodings with deprecated types (see BSON) and bloating the format.

Re: Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate?

#502

Post by kstenerud » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 8:02 AM UTC

minhmeoke wrote: post #470

kstenerud wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I had a look at avro as well. I've been following all of the established and nascant formats over a number of years, hoping for one that addresses my concerns, but unfortunately nothing emerged. My ambitions are actually at a much higher level; this is just to set a solid foundation for them. Cyclic bombs are but one security concern... There are actually a LOT of them, which I try to cover cover in the security…

Thank you for the detailed and comprehensive explanations! > There are actually a LOT of [security concerns], which I try to cover in the security section If you'd like to eventually harden the binary implementations, you might also be interested in coverage-guided fuzz testing which feeds random garbage data to a method to try and find errors in it: https://llvm.org/docs/LibFuzzer.html as well as maybe some kind of…

> If you'd like to eventually harden the binary implementations, you might also be interested in coverage-guided fuzz testing which feeds random garbage data to a method to try and find errors in it: https://llvm.org/docs/LibFuzzer.html

Yes, I plan to fuzz the hell out of the reference implementation once it's done. So much to do, so little time...

> I see, so the main use case of the CTE text format is rapid prototyping, and then the user should convert to the CBE binary format in production?

CTE would be for prototyping, initial data loads, debugging, auditing, logging, visualizing, possibly even for configuration (since the config would be local and not sourced from unknown origin). Basically: CBE when data passes from machine to machine, and CTE only where a human needs to get involved.

> Another approach would be to embed the grammar and parser into an existing language like Python, Rust, or Haskell, and let the user define their own custom types in that language.

I demonstrate this in the reference implementation by adding cplx() type support for go as a custom type. Then people are free to come up with their own encodings for their custom needs (one could specify in the schema how to decode them). I think there's enough there as-is to support most custom needs.

> maybe it would make sense to create a small set of core types (kind of like a standard library), and then permit extensions via user-defined types which must be whitelisted?

I thought about that, but the complexity grows fast, and then you have a constellation of "conformant" codecs that have different levels of support, which means you can now only count on the minimal set of required types and the rest are useless. The fewer optional parts, the better.

Re: Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate?

#503

Post by mickel » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 4:45 PM UTC

I'm looking for someone interested in joining my project Podopi (podopi.com). It's a SaaS that helps website owners add audio versions of their blog posts, and publish it as a podcast on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts and more.

The app is written in Elixir and I work solo on dev/design, but have a co-founder that focuses on marketing and growth. Get in touch if you'd like to hear more!

Re: Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate?

#504

Post by fsflover » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

ternaryJimbo wrote: post #122

I am working on a project whos intent is to harness unused computational power from unused/rarely used servers or other devices, and allows a business to run background jobs on this spare compute. Think BOINC but for enterprise. I've never validated this idea if its actually something businesses would use, but I've had fun coding it so far as just a side project. I have been overwhelmed since I have not built anythin…

Are you aware of https://www.golem.network?

Re: Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate?

#505

Post by alexmojaki » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

eternityforest wrote: post #472

asicsp wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you mention both Python and webdev, check out https://github.com/alexmojaki/futurecoder (100% free and interactive Python course for beginners) From an interview ( https://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2021/12/13/pydev-of-the-w... ) with Alex Hall: > A challenge I'm struggling with is making the site look good...I'm struggling to find people to help me build futurecoder further

I just took a brief few-minutes look, and so far the only visual offense I'm seeing is a black terminal in a white page. It actually looks pretty well done!

Creator here. Thank you! I could definitely still use help if you're willing, here's some specific issues:

https://github.com/alexmojaki/futurecoder/issues/212 https://github.com/alexmojaki/futurecoder/issues/226 https://github.com/alexmojaki/futurecoder/issues/253 https://github.com/alexmojaki/futurecoder/issues/259

Re: Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate?

#506

Post by josefrichter » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

mg wrote: post #3

Hey, I want to put together an open source project that gives an overview of how to set up a minimal viable web application from scratch via all the different frameworks. The idea is to format the tutorial for each framework as a shell script. So there is no ambiguity of how to reproduce the results. And it is even possible to just copy&paste the steps into a docker container and see the framework in action. Here is…

Similar efforts maybe?:

https://fullstackphoenix.com/ https://railsbytes.com/

Re: Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate?

#507

Post by riantogo » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

s7r wrote: post #493

riantogo wrote: post #281

I’m thinking of bringing back good old forums. Completed the development but haven’t gotten time to spread the word and build monetization tools (for forum owners). Anyone wants to team up in 2022? https://discoflip.com

Is discoflip open source? If so, would love to support and contribute!

Currently it is not. And mostly because I don't know how to maintain an open source project.

Re: Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate?

#508

Post by ternaryJimbo » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 5:07 AM UTC

fsflover wrote: post #504

ternaryJimbo wrote: post #122

I am working on a project whos intent is to harness unused computational power from unused/rarely used servers or other devices, and allows a business to run background jobs on this spare compute. Think BOINC but for enterprise. I've never validated this idea if its actually something businesses would use, but I've had fun coding it so far as just a side project. I have been overwhelmed since I have not built anythin…

Are you aware of https://www.golem.network ?

Ive seen that, that is more of a public "Want to sell your compute to random strangers on the internet?" as far as I understand. my offering is private, supposed to be something for individual companies to make use of their own idle compute on their own business problems.

Re: Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate?

#509

Post by dharmaturtle » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 12:32 AM UTC

tdekken wrote: post #164

I am a former principal software engineer at a MAMAA company turned independent educational researcher. My primary interest is in deliberate practice and how to use spaced repetition (i.e., Anki) to develop expertise. I have three primary areas that I am working on and would love to find serious collaborators: 1) I am building high-quality content for math, English language arts, chess, etc. (see [0] for a good expla…

I'm trying to build GitHub for flashcards: https://github.com/dharmaturtle/cardoverflow

Emailing you!

Re: Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate?

#510

Post by dharmaturtle » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 12:53 AM UTC

narcraft wrote: post #354

tdekken wrote: post #164

I am a former principal software engineer at a MAMAA company turned independent educational researcher. My primary interest is in deliberate practice and how to use spaced repetition (i.e., Anki) to develop expertise. I have three primary areas that I am working on and would love to find serious collaborators: 1) I am building high-quality content for math, English language arts, chess, etc. (see [0] for a good expla…

Have you already written about the challenges alluded to in item 2 of your post somewhere? I would love for these resources to exist and I'm curious about the obstacles you're facing.

I talk about this a little in an old reddit thread:

> With StackOverflow/Wikipedia there's only one article/question/answer. With flashcards, people want to individualize their cards. As an example, for you as a foreign language learner, perhaps you want to include short clips from movies/youtube of someone saying a phrase like "Where is the library?", while someone else wants to use a clip of the same phrase from a podcast. The semantic content is the same, but the reification into a flashcard is not. You could possibly link to related cards like StackOverflow does in a sidebar... but I'm designing something that's more like concept learning. Each card is an Example of a Concept. The author can then move their Card/Example into what Concept they think it best fits - or create a new Concept if they can't find anything they like. Basically I'm building in the ability to group cards that have very similar content. By looking at all the various Examples/Cards, a person can choose what best suits their style - or make one for themselves by forking an existing card.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/nalar8/open_source_we...