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

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

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was looking for it for ages. Please make a British version as well! This is neat!

Glad you like it! But I thought the UK duckhead already has a ground pin? https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MKU63B/A/67w-usb-c-pow...

At least on my older mag safe charger, only 2 pins are connected. You can pull off the UK plug and plug in the US or EU one, or even just a regular figure 8 lead (not sure of the correct name for these!)

Had a few times where I've had to disconnect the charger as I could feel an effect like static electricity on the metal case of the MacBook.

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

#192
https://docit.dev/

I am building a Knowledge Transfer platform for software engineers that let's people make documents with video recordings, screen recordings, voice recordings, diagram making, document hosting, and more all in one place. The goal is to put all the features native to the platform, that way the user can just click and use rather than be redirected to a third party integration.

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

#193
I run a clone of hacker news with a small but dedicated group of users. I implemented support for basically every public feature in HN, with the exception of the “past” link and getting rid of dynamic links. It implements HN search via Algolia, HN’s api via Firebase, HN’s javascript and css. People have submitted a total of 2700 items over two years, which is frankly incredible to me. It’s also scooped HN three or four times, where stories that appear there end up on HN a day or weeks later. I find that amusing.

It costs $12/mo, runs on FreeBSD just like HN originally did, and requires almost no moderation. It succeeded in replicating the feeling of HN’s early days, in terms of a sense of wonder when you stumble across it. But almost no one comments, much to my surprise.

I should probably do a writeup someday. But mainly I wanted w high quality HN implementation. pg’s original code vs this took two months of dedicated work. Figuring out firebase and algolia bindings for Arc took some (enjoyable) doing.

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

#194

Believe it or not, I sell the following on Fiverr as radiantxp21: "I will special stocks and option picks lose all your money fast and intelligently" I know, it sounds a bit, non-English, but in my defense: it was my first time using Fiverr and I had no clue how to use it. The ad is up for a few months already, and I had many laughs creating it, but yesterday I had my first client! I panicked, I realized that I am as…

Maybe they mean to counter trade you, i.e. short the terrible stocks you recommend and become immensily rich.

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

#195
I built a library that adds a digital copyright in the LSB of a for example image.

It is resistant to cropping and other such edits.

I don't care if it is successful because I was originally just having fun with steganography and stumbled on to this use case.

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

#198
I made https://distilledjs.com/, it's a Javascript testing library with no dependencies, the entire API is only 3 methods (only 1 of which is really necessary to learn), and it very deliberately doesn't ship with a lot of standard features.

Distilled is based on an evolution in my personal philosophy about how effective testing works and about how good APIs are designed in general. My goal building it was to have something that is extremely flexible, but that is also so simple that I can start using it within about a minute of setting up a new project. When I start writing Javascript, I don't add a testing framework immediately. Instead, I import Distilled and write my tests in the same file that I'm writing my code in. Later on, as the project evolves I start to separate things out and build a more complicated testing setup.

I have obviously put some work into documenting it and making it available to other people, but I don't need anyone else to use it. The project is already mature enough that I am using it in every single personal project I maintain. It doesn't need a big ecosystem, it doesn't need a big community. I haven't touched the API in probably close to 2 years.

I will likely use Distilled for the majority of all of my personal projects in Node for all of the foreseeable future in my development career. I've used a lot of testing frameworks, and for my particular needs I think that Distilled is the best testing library available for me to use. It has saved me an enormous amount of time, and it makes it easier for me to do complicated things with my testing suites, which has made developing other personal projects much easier. If nobody other than me ever picks it up or uses it, it doesn't matter. It's already paid for its own development costs in personal time savings on other projects by an order of magnitude, and I think it will continue to do so in the future.

I think it's one of the most personally useful pieces of software I've ever written in terms of pure benefit to my own development processes, and (while I'd be happy to see more people use it) I don't think that having a community around Distilled would change anything or introduce any giant benefits. I'm not going to add a bunch of extra features or methods to the API. It's really stable and extensively tested; I've been using it for years and I'm not aware of any bugs that need to be hunted down that a community could help with. So if other people want to use Distilled, great, but them using it or ignoring it changes nothing about how useful it is to me.

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

#199
I can't stand most http libraries (full of mutable state!) and I spend a lot of time making http calls. So I built a functional/immutable http request library which has been dramatically improving my personal quality of life for about 7 years now. No idea if anyone else uses it, but it doesn't really matter.

Java version: https://github.com/stickfigure/hattery

Typescript version: https://github.com/stickfigure/hatteryjs

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

#200
I want to help people aged 18-34 get better with their finances and economic thinking. By doing so, they can emancipate themselves and stop giving their soul to the boomercracy in exchange for financial security they don't need. I started a newsletter, I use twitter for R&D, and I expect to start an instagram with videos and infographics soon.

Eventually I could develop a neat budgeting app which help people realize that the point of money is to finance their needs, from physiological to spiritual.

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