I start with FoxPro so eventually get on the board of making a version of it (https://tablam.org), and now I'm regular at
- https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/
and because this working on a RDBMs, so:
Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
61–70 of 316 posts
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#62I run a 22yo online competition for a 32yo DOS racing game: Stunts, or 4D Sports Driving in some countries. The competition has spawned a long-lived community which includes reverse engineering, game patches, new cars, alternative engines, a few world meetings, and multiple other competitions. - https://zak.stunts.hu - https://wiki.stunts.hu/wiki/Custom_cars - https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?board=90.0&label=stunts…
Stunts was one my favourite games around 93-95, I played it a lot. Another guy from Hungary.
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#63Web scraping. I love figuring out how to reverse engineer websites and defeat systems designed against web scrapers. It's also super interesting (concerning?) how much data websites leak. 4 out of the 5 bug bounties I've discovered have been while poking around in my scraping efforts.
What's a good tool/language to write scrapers in these days? A decade ago I was using ruby with mechanize and hpricot. I hope tools have improved since then, especially for scraping sites that use javascript.
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#64Algorithmic art and pen plotters - super fun and wonderful community.
I also try to be part of the algorithmic/generative art community. It seems really scattered but the variety of techniques and ideas flowing around is really inspiring :)
After stable diffusion/midjourney, the community is a little leery of deep learning I've noticed. But I'm trying to carve out a space using neural networks in a different way) anyway.
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#65Algorithmic art and pen plotters - super fun and wonderful community.
I love the plotter community!
A timely shill: for three years now, I've run an annual international postcard exchange that's kinda like a Secret Santa for people with plotters. This happens to be the week that registrations are open. https://buttondown.email/ptpx/archive/ptpx-2022-holiday-card...
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#66Disclaimer: I am in no way encouraging or advocating for software piracy. The warez scene in 90s and early 00s was fun to follow. I consider the NFO files a legitimate form of art, not to mention the skills for unpacking and keygen-ing or cracking of the protected software. https://scenelist.org/
> I am in no way encouraging or advocating for software piracy.
I am.
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#67I'm in the deep learning music scene, which is due for its stable diffusion moment in the next year or two. The (primarily) timbre transfer system called RAVE is where I'm starting, and my contribution is to optimize the system to improve training time. [] https://github.com/acids-ircam/RAVE/tree/master/rave
I can definitely see Spotify taking something like this and generating songs based on your likes/seeds, especially for edm music.
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#68Not really weird anymore as there's a lot of entry level and cloud-based components for people to get into it with. My scene is the localized automation scene; basically home automation but with no cloud connected products.
I don't understand why this is not more of a thing.
I really don't like the idea of relying on offsite resources for automation, but it seems to be 99% of what goes on in home automation.
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#69Browser extensions. Not quite a website, not quite a mobile app, and surprisingly pervasive. Most people don't realize how incredibly powerful they are, even with manifest v3. I almost fell out of my chair when I found out there were no books on how to build them, so I wrote one: https://www.buildingbrowserextensions.com/ It was incredibly enjoyable to go through the APIs and write about all the different crazy thing…
Great idea for a book. I'll get it.
Thanks! It should be available sometime next week.
Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?
#70I loved LiteStep - an alternative shell for Windows. It could make the desktop experience so nice - so custom.
I created a bunch of themes for it: https://www.deviantart.com/yboris/gallery/12368848/litestep