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

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

#651
post #251

Seat 14A (www.seat14a.com) a). Most men hate shopping. b). Sizes are never consistent and a number cannot define a unique bodily shape. Our solution: We simply send an email with a few complete looks every few weeks, if you like a look - order it and we make it made to measure for you. We ship globally for free. Each look is about $150-$175 (so won't break your bank account). Each look is based off of heavy research…

This is a really great idea. Just some feedback: The product photos, on my screen, look pretty low quality. I imagine this is because they are being scaled to the size of the browser. It also makes it a little hard to use as the photo takes the entire screen and requires scrolling for the information and site navigation.

Thanks ON. We intentionally kept the photos full-screen to give it a more magazine feel. WRT quality - def. going to up our game soon. Recently set up our own photo studio in the office (psyched!)

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

#652

I'm working on software that assists in cancer diagnoses. We apply a healthy serving of computer vision and a touch of machine learning to high resolution images (10Gpx) of cancer tissue. Hopefully we'll be able to make diagnosis faster and more accurate, doing our small part to save lives.

How did you get into this field, out of curiosity?

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

#653
post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python. I wanted to make the underlying ideas as transparent as possible, so I chose a language which many people will find accessible, and I've tried to use simple, easily understandable idioms. I hope it will also be easily accessible to people who use Python rarely.

Translation rights for books in human languages are a well established thing. I wonder if there's any analogue for technical books using a particular computing language, ie the base explanatory text is kept the same (as much as possible) but the code samples are "translated" to another computer language ? For example, if I didn't know Python, it would be great to be able to pick up a "translation" of your book with t…

The idea you describe seems like it would also work for learning new languages. If you already understood the subject matter in the book, you could pick up a copy for a different programming language and compare it to the copy in a language you know; comparing examples 1-to-1 would make it significantly easier (in my opinion) to understand the new language's syntax and style, and the applicability of specific features of the new language.

Dr. Andrew Appel (of Standard ML fame) wrote a compiler book, Modern Compiler Implementation in ML, in the way you're suggesting. After the ML version of the book was published, he went back and "translated" it to both C and Java to produce two new books.

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

#654
Creating a non-intrusive task management application.

For example, you mail what the guy has to do and add this mail in cc: in_15_days@maildo.me . When the task is finished, he responds to you and adds: finished@maildo.me in CC.

You can set up options for a weekly overview of tasks with their current state.

Still developing the system though, but if your interested just add your mail to this form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Im08qadrAvOv0LHVq-rNFPIlpPA... and i'll notify you with more information :)

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

#655
I have started working on a library to simplify exposing C++ classes to various languages that can be "embeded". A link to the second attempt [1], my current attempt is to expose things to V8 Javascript [2]

It is cool because in addition of exposing and sharing objects, it can be used to output the documentation for them, or even ease embeding such languages as C# (to generate interop library automatically).

Note that this is my second attempt (recently started), the first one worked but relied on some overcomplicated third party libraries for V8, I could not understand them fully, therefore a reboot.

[1] https://github.com/key-tools/key-machine

[2] https://github.com/key-tools/key-v8-machine/blob/master/key-...

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

#656
post #642

I'm working on a news reader that works in the opposite way of traditional news reading apps. It uses Twitter as a sort of enhanced RSS feed and ranks news based on how much they are shared in real-time, and lays them down in a newspaper-like format specifically designed for mobile devices. It allows you to find what's important for people rather then what matters to newsroom's editors, and put you in a whole differe…

Not available in the app store in Canada.

It puzzles me why people do this, because it is just as easy to make the app available everywhere as it is to limit it to a particular country.

Anyway, interesting idea. Pity about the gunshot wound in your foot. Hope it heals.

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

#659

A high performance, affordable personal airplane: http://www.skycraftairplanes.com It's extremely fuel efficient, can fly 575 miles on a tank, cruises at 118 mph, and comes standard with really nice instrumentation including GPS, collision avoidance, synthetic flight, and an auxiliary input for your iPod. They sell for $55k. Here's the HN post I made a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5826062

Damn. I really wish you had this for sale already. I've seen too many awesome things like this "a few months from market" for half a dozen years until they quietly disappeared.

You're in "shut up and take my money" territory here. I'm a GA pilot who rents at the moment. 55k? That's less than my freakin car.

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

#660
Cloud Imaging API http://ionapi.com - A lot of software I write faciltates design online, web to print type stuff, and I noticed a real void in a robust image manipulation API. This restful API makes it pretty easy to get images generated of text with lots of effects.

Why it is cool: -supports obvious features rotation, resizing, etc of images, but that isn't really the important parts

-Vector first, text is generated as vector then converted to raster if needed (for client side previews). An API request you can access the underlying point data or request a vector file(eps,pdf) in response rather than raster (png).

-Robust Text features - load fonts on the fly,shear, vector outlines (offset path), texture support, gradients, warps, shadows, etc

-Object structure allows complex images to be built from other canvas objects previously saved or pulled from the net, canvas can be built from vector or raster sources, or through the API.

-Ultimately the API will make it painfully simple to overlay designs on objects such as pens, mugs, koozies, shirts, vehicles, etc.

What is not cool: it isn't done :( Unfortunately it isn't ready for open access yet. I have a few customers using parts that are done, but mainly documentation is not done and there is no front end developed yet for sign ups/ registration. If you are interested in using this please let me know or use the notification form on the site.

Where is it being used? Several places, one of my clients you can checkout that uses it http://bandegraphix.com (lettering tool, rclogo/decal tool) another one Dynamic Product Image placement http://boatdecals.biz/lake-swag/ (canvas creation, masking, warping)

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