Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

I built an email archive for Novell GroupWise that went on to sell into the millions :-)

That's very kind of you to ask!

There is the Buy Me a Coffee page, where you can donate if you like. Thank you!

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/IR7p0Dg

I'm not in hi-tech or engineering. In fact, I'm a photographer who has made a living in the this field starting in 1989. This forum is a wonderful resource for me, so I thought I would mention my particular contribution to the world as I contemplate retirement.

I've traveled North America photographing native bats. This was born from an obsession with documenting creatures that are not easily observed (this goes far beyond bats).

To accomplish the bat project, I built my own high-speed photo systems, designed specialty gear, and developed a processes for capturing extremely detailed images of bats in flight. Others had done it before me, but never shared the technical process. So I had to build it myself. Then I collaborated with biologists and institutions around the country to learn about behavior and more. It was a hell of a journey.

I'm so proud of the project. This work is very hard recreate these days because of a pandemic amongst bats (WNS) and humans (Covid). I think bats are among the most interesting creatures on the planet.

Working with all of these bat biologists, I learned of the holy grail of bats. Its a species that was once considered one of the rarest species in North America. Up until the 90's only a few specimens have ever been observed or documented.

But if you want to see images of the most spectacular bat in North America - the spotted bat - I am in a rare group who has ever seen one much less photographed them.

Some day I'll have to tell the story of Kentucky cave shrimp and how I traveled to the deepest bowels of Mammoth Cave with a crew of 20 - A combined group from the National Park Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service to photograph these tiny and rare shrimp.

Don't get me started on my journey to photograph red tree voles (that only live at the top of mature douglas fir trees).

I'm bragging - yes. I never imagined I could make a six figure income from this work. I expected to be poor. I genuinely hope this work has lasting impact.

Coming from a family rooted in poverty, addiction, and early death - this path has been a surprise beyond description.

Building on the shoulders of giants: I've made Google's Web Search >10% faster.

That's a nice, beautifully-rendered project. I winced when you mentioned copyright. On my sites (eg GiveThemLife.com), I try to avoid copywritten material in on-site content. I can't tell people it's free for any use if my dependencies might not be. That God gave us His Word as a free gift, but His children restrict it, just bothers me.

I'm so grateful for MPJ and others who made the World English Bible. It's good enough most of the time. If not, I sometimes customize the passage by mixing it with synonyms from other, public-domain translations. Even the dynamic translations, like Weymouth, are good for mining words. Many are on studybible.info, e-SWORD modules, and even on eBay in book form.

Far as your tool, I don't see how you could merge copywritten content into the main interface. However, you might add a button or menu action for each verse that generates a pop-up to an external page with many translations. BibleHub is good for that. One side effect is that your site causes people to bump into other content that may help them.

Re licensing. I am curious how much they wanted to charge you. Especially for ESV. For one translation, WEB's author was quoted $10,000 plus $10 a copy for use in free software.