Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#81

Post by jon-wood » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 11:40 PM UTC

Learning to make actual physical things. I’m trying to get back into building electronic things - mostly home automation bits, and blinkenlights, after an extended hiatus. Just after Christmas I also picked up a 3D printer so I could do cases for things as well, since the biggest aspect that had been putting me off was that projects always ended up as a bare breadboard/PCB lying around.

So far I’m loving doing something real, as opposed to mostly software, but ultimately I don’t intend for it to become some sort income source so if it turns out I’m terrible at it, meh, at least I had fun learning some stuff.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#82

Post by ssz » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 11:41 PM UTC

I have a few.

https://rate.house is a user generated media database. It's like IMDb but also has music, literature, video games, and podcasts.

https://newsasfacts.com provides the most important news around the world concisely.

https://wordhoot.com is a word guessing game inspired by Wordle featuring multiplayer, unlimited plays, and detailed playing history/stats.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#83

Post by louisstow » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 11:43 PM UTC

https://signals.to

I'm building a cybersecurity database that aggregates vulnerability information from about 100 different sources in one cohesive structured dataset that can be easily queried. It'll be much faster than CVEs and include way more things (remedy information, news, social media, forum, advisories).

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#84

Post by rsync » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 11:43 PM UTC

"Oh By"[1]

It's a "universal shortener" which means it doesn't just shorten URLs - it shortens anything and turns it into a short, recognizable code.

Or, what would be a recognizable code if anyone used it :)

Here's an example: https://0x.co/examples.html ... and for some reason I am still enamored with the "send a text to someone in the future" use-case.

[1] https://0x.co

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#85

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 11:44 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #80

Rumudiez wrote: post #78

My day job. Personal projects get a little more heart, but "success" to me is usually intrinsic, not extrinsic. I'm probably a little weird when it comes to motivating factors, but not alone.

Oof. This is probably most people, too. There need to be more jobs where the interest alignment in work is 100%. Disney animators, Nintendo programmers, audio programming, SpaceX engineers, ML/AI, bioinformatics, ... Rockets, chemicals, machines, visual toys, solving moonshot things, ... Less plumbing and glue code. Less adtech. Less studying and optimizing trivial human interactions that nobody will remember.

Unless you're constantly changing jobs, it doesn't last.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#86

Post by interpol_p » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 11:46 PM UTC

My partner and I created https://retrogram.app for iOS/watchOS

We started designing it at the end of 2020 and released it in Jan 2022. We met over word games, and love playing them together so we wanted to make one with all the polish we could put into it

It's inspired by the 1970s, old Atari game packaging, VHS tapes, Beach Boys albums, etc. We spend time making the puzzle together each day and put quite a lot into it in terms of stories for the different words, themes, and curating words based on upcoming events. You can see what I mean from our Twitter[1] or Instagram[2]

Our goal was to have it cover its own costs, to earn about $500/year (Apple Dev expenses, font licensing, hosting, Firebase). This would allow us to justify working on it. It has earned $1000 in January so far (probably because Apple featured it) so we consider it a success for this year and next year

[1] https://twitter.com/RetrogramApp

[2] https://instagram.com/retrogram.app

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#87

Post by _wldu » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 11:48 PM UTC

https://gen.go350.com/login

https://github.com/62726164/ed25519-login

I built a website that uses public Ed25519 keys for user authentication (rather than passwords). Users sign the current Unix Epoch time (with the private Ed25519 key) and paste that base64 encoded signature into the login form.

I don't care if the idea succeeds or not, I use it for myself. I like simple, secure things and I feel webauthn is too complex.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#88

Post by voidfunc » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 11:48 PM UTC

Pretty much anything I do for my employer. Ill make sure it works and is high quality but I am well past the stage of my career where I am emotionally invested in any of this crap.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#89

Post by shrimp_emoji » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 11:49 PM UTC

Every one of my projects :)

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#90

Post by clucas » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 11:50 PM UTC

I am actively working on improving a nearly 30 year old MUD (rewriting major systems, adding new ones, etc.). There are maybe one to two dozen players at any given time, and I don't really expect it to get much bigger. It is a lot of fun.