Ask HN: What are you working on? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#381

Post by biztos » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 6:40 PM UTC

lloeki wrote: post #114

applecrazy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be critical, but isn't Homebrew or Fink good enough? What features does your package manager offer that are better than these active projects?

A very valid question, I've been a Fink user, then MacPorts, then Arch OS X, then Homebrew and now Arch OS X again, and I've got some more detailed writing about this that I ought to publish one day. From the top of my head: - PGP-signed repo db + packages (Homebrew relies solely on git SHA1s) - package binary deltas - building new packages is very simple thanks to ABS (Fink and MacPorts are a pain) - doesn't write e…

Sounds interesting, I will check it out for sure.

I'm mostly happy with Homebrew but I have had trouble occasionally with the multi-user thing. Because some people (at least one!) still use different user accounts on the same Mac, e.g. "work" and "private."

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#382

Post by tmccrmck » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 6:41 PM UTC

theaustinseven wrote: post #239

I've been working on a new programming language mainly to be what I think Go could have been. I think that it is important for us to have a compiled language that feels like a dynamic language. Its taking a lot of influence from ruby, erlang, and some assorted functional languages.

Any example syntax?

Sounds like you're implementing OCaml with Ruby syntax.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#383

Post by ncantelmo » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 6:42 PM UTC

roseburg wrote: post #350

ncantelmo wrote: post #29

Problem: The process of getting thoughts from your head into an organized, written draft form isn't as fast or accessible as it could be. Project: I'm building a conversational UI / bot ( https://writing.ai ) that helps people write faster. The basic idea is that it asks you a series of questions about a topic, asks follow-up questions for more detail as needed, and when it's done outputs a completed draft. You're st…

I also find this fascinating. I just signed up..ryan@recraigslist.com I also have another use case I'd like to bounce off you if you could shoot me an email. Thanks!

Email sent, happy to hear about your use case!

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#384

Post by sixo » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 6:43 PM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #190

I have a project idea that might be useful for someone to learn about audio processing (and maybe neural networks?). I like to listen to audio and watch video of podcasts (and lectures and other human speech) at faster speeds. Sometime, especially if I'm trying to "skim" to see if the media is worth listening to carefully, I'd like to listen at 3x or faster. Very often, the limiting factor is the intelligibility of t…

An audio version of those bots that summarize news articles could solve the problem in a different way.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#385

Post by m52go » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 6:46 PM UTC

A "Codecademy" for effective writing.

There are plenty of books & lectures teaching this, but nothing interactive.

I got the idea from running a game that makes effective writing competitive:

http://brevitybowl.com

Training section will be up soon. Getting format, design, and approach has been tricky.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#386

Post by sentinel » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 6:46 PM UTC

Working on a better way to manage songs and Spotify playlists through an interface like Spotlight search. No more dragging and dropping songs in playlists.

It's a Mac app, you bring it up by pressing CMD+SHIFT+SPACE and it adds the currently playing song to a playlist you type in.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mick-tagger-spotify-playlist...

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#387

Post by ncantelmo » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 6:47 PM UTC

GrinningFool wrote: post #227

ncantelmo wrote: post #29

Problem: The process of getting thoughts from your head into an organized, written draft form isn't as fast or accessible as it could be. Project: I'm building a conversational UI / bot ( https://writing.ai ) that helps people write faster. The basic idea is that it asks you a series of questions about a topic, asks follow-up questions for more detail as needed, and when it's done outputs a completed draft. You're st…

This looks really intriguing, I look forward to seeing where you go with it.

Appreciate it! I'm looking forward to it too, at this point.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#388

Post by ajones05 » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 6:47 PM UTC

Project: SeeAround.me - an app to see and share hyperlocal news by location (like Waze for what's happening nearby). All content is user generated, with most of it in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley for now.

Frustration: It's hard to see what's happening near you based on your location (hyperlocal news, events, restaurant openings/closures, construction, etc.) Local news is distributed across so many sources, and it's not easy to see where exactly stories are taking place.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#389

Post by michaelspivey » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #261

I'm designing a 3D printed robot arm that doesn't suck. It uses all brushless outrunner motors for at least the 4 large axes (final two in wrist may be hobby servos for now). The arm is similar dimensions to a human arm. Initial calculations show it will be able to lift more than 2kg at full extension if I can make it strong enough. Actually the (rough) calculations say more than 10kg but that would break something.…

Cool. The onshape link asks me to login right away. Without logging in, I don't see your 3D item. You're invited to also upload the robot arm to www.3dprintmakers.com.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#390

Post by jessriedel » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 6:51 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #380

jessriedel wrote: post #190

I have a project idea that might be useful for someone to learn about audio processing (and maybe neural networks?). I like to listen to audio and watch video of podcasts (and lectures and other human speech) at faster speeds. Sometime, especially if I'm trying to "skim" to see if the media is worth listening to carefully, I'd like to listen at 3x or faster. Very often, the limiting factor is the intelligibility of t…

I'd find that really compelling. Consider hand-producing a sample via manual audio editing, to demonstrate the limits of what ought to be possible. Find some audio you think could be listened to at that rate, see how fast you can listen to it via standard sound stretching techniques (e.g. libsoundtouch and similar), and then demonstrate how much better you can do with hand-editing. Worry about how to automate that af…

Yea, it's a good point. We can logically distinguish between the basic audio problem (which might be really hard) from the automation problem.

On the other hand, suppose we somehow got good training data by getting a bunch of audio samples at the same number of words per minute that were graded by human listeners as easy or hard to understand. Then in principle something like a neural net might figure out what audio features were responsible for intelligibility and then adjust the non-intelligible audio in that direction (a la using convolutional neural nets to make pictures appear in the style of a famous painter without changing the content). This would be done automatically without any humans actually understanding the solution.