Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 786 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#581

Post by younata »

dombili wrote: post #563
younata wrote: post #243

I have been building a (highly accurate) flight simulator. Basically, I'm taking a geometric approach to the flight dynamics model (similar to how x-plane works, except they're using... older techniques/technology. I'm using much more advanced stuff [working on seeing if I can simulate the airflow for the entire craft, as opposed to doing it by sections and then integrating those together]). This is in contrast to th…

That sounds great. As someone who has a lot of interest in aviation and stuff that's related to aviation, the lack of flight simulators on the market is bothering. I tried almost every simulation that's out there, but none of them fit to my needs (good, simple UI with extremely realistic controls. that's not too much to ask, is it?). Hopefully you'll make something that's more appealing than other products. Speaking…

Thank you for the interest! Right now, x-plane basically is the only player in the flight sim market (MS has officially stated they've left - though I doubt it's for good, FlightGear is the only other flight sim worth mentioning, and it's nowhere near as good/accurate as what I need), which, as you (indirectly) pointed out, is troublesome - the market is ripe for disruption. I'm aiming to at least provide healthy competition to increase the quality of all flight simulators (I'm also applying to get into this next YC batch... hopefully I'll get an interview. I doubt I'll get in, because lack of a cofounder).

I actually just wrote a script to generate an atom feed for this (I mean, I have some updates which are on my main index page, but, that's not a way to easily enable people to follow me...), so you can follow my little self-generated atom feed at http://younata.com/feed.atom right now, it's just a single post that links to my above comment, but I'll try to write at least once a week.

By the way, the datestamps on that feed are in UTC, which is localtime for my server.

Feel free to send me an email so I can notify you when I have a prototype. My email is listed in my profile.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#582

Post by Jack5500 »

mazumdar wrote: post #444
babby wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm already sold on it, looks like a solid product; however my only questions now are: - How much? - International shipping? How much?

Thanks so much! The validation means a lot. How much? $54 Retail, but when we open on kickstarter next week, we want this to reach as many people as possible and are going to give it out at (almost) cost: 1 shirt for $34. 2 shirts for $64. 3 shirts for $90. US shipping included. International shipping: Add $20. Happy to answer any other questions you have.

Why so much for international Shipping? Seems a lot to me for such a little package

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#583

Post by younata »

carterschonwald wrote: post #558
younata wrote: post #243

I have been building a (highly accurate) flight simulator. Basically, I'm taking a geometric approach to the flight dynamics model (similar to how x-plane works, except they're using... older techniques/technology. I'm using much more advanced stuff [working on seeing if I can simulate the airflow for the entire craft, as opposed to doing it by sections and then integrating those together]). This is in contrast to th…

very very cool! At some point i want to dig into how to write physics simulations, in the mean time i'm slowly working on trying to make better numerical computing tools, which is sort of a precondition to playing with simulation.

Oh, man. My previous experience in building simulators is a spaceflight simulator I wrote at the beginning of the year, because space, life is easy and I didn't have to really write hard numerical computing code. This is easily the most challenging thing I've ever written (but it's also easily the most fun thing I've ever written).

Good look getting into writing physics simulations!

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#585

Post by iM8t »

HMW: http://hmworship.com/ - on offline WEB App for song lyrics/chords.

It's really cool because most of the current chord sites lack the one critical feature for the mobile age: offline usage.

And also it's amazing because it's built entirely by volunteers and the users are evangelizing it themselves. We have never spent a dime on salaries/marketing or anything else. 100% bootstrapped.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#586

Post by sycren »

mercuryrising wrote: post #462
sycren wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered asking for help? I'm willing to bet that there might be other hardware startups in your area, on HN or in your university that would be willing to give you a hand.

I actually went to the local university - they said that you can't use university resources for personal gain (I was trying to print a case on their 3D printer). I'm sure there would be some people in the engineering department willing to give me some pointers, there's also a local prototyping company (I've emailed them a few times). Nothing too serious though - I guess I don't really have much of a plan yet, and did…

Where are you based?

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#587

Post by defied »

kordless wrote: post #546
defied wrote: post #174

A Selenium Grid ( http://testingbot.com ) I love working on this because I get to learn a variety of things. Right now I'm switching from Amazon EC2 to my own setup with KVM/Qemu VMs. It's been quite the experience prototyping with kvm/qemu, overall I'm really happy with it. From tuning libvirt, to loading RAM images straight into the VM in order to avoid boot-storms, learning about the various VM disk formats, virti…

Wonder if you could do it with OpenStack?

Probably could, but at this point I don't want the overhead OpenStack brings along.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#588

Post by lukaseder »

jessepollak wrote: post #268

Clef ( https://getclef.com ) — a replacement for usernames and passwords on the web. It's cool because it allows the 99% of people who aren't technical to use public key cryptography to log in to websites.

I'm technical and I don't enjoy ordinary implementations of public key cryptography!

Good job, and good luck!

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#589

Post by lukaseder »

shaunrussell wrote: post #575

Upbeat ( https://www.upbeatapp.com/ ) -- hackernews meets soundcloud. It's cool because: * Users can democratically decide which music is popular. * Music is browseable by genre, and filterable by sub genre. * Users can save songs and add them to a queue for later listening. * Powered by Angular.js, Node.js, Redis. * Average server response time: 9ms * Bootstrapped by 3 friends, in less than 1 month, only working nig…

How is it profitable? Do you get a commission from Amazon?

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#590

Post by lyricalpolymath »

fudged71 wrote: post #498
lyricalpolymath wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

very cool! - is it just a monitoring app or can you actually launch printings like in octoprint? - Is there a way to encrypt the code sent so that the owner of the printer couldn't grab not even the G-code and reproduce the file once it's on his printer?

More than just monitoring! You can upload an STL to print, choose the slicer, and send to a queue that multiple printers can print from. All remotely via the web. We can encrypt the transmission, but technically you could read the GCode straight from the serial input at the printer.

Yeah I thought so. Do you see any solutions to that? like putting a piece of hardware at the very end overriding or substituting the printer's control board, that would be able to decrypt the gcode and directly control the motors and extruders or the final electronics. I'm imagining this piece of hardware would work like the horrible hardware keys: the 3d file or gcode wouldn't be sent if it doesn't detect this hardware at the end of the process.

How hard do you think that would be? I imagine that for open source 3d printers that would kind of easy... There is a business in there if you solve this ;)

Post reply on HN