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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?

#701

Post by timmclean »

nathanathan wrote: post #618
timmclean wrote: post #54

http://www.timmclean.net/json-editor/ A code editor that uses knowledge of a programming language's grammar. It's cool because it should be significantly more efficient than working in vim/emacs, and will allow powerful scripting capabilities and macros to transform code structurally, instead of as text.

I experimented with using cfgs in a code editor before but with the aim of making it easier to code on touch screen devices where curly braces and the like are difficult to type. Here's a prototype I started for writing Json. http://nathanathan.com/cfg-gen/

Neat!

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

#702

Post by smoyer »

markmassie wrote: post #490

Nuclear reactor startup ( http://transatomicpower.com ) designing a molten salt reactor to turn nuclear waste into clean energy at prices competitive with natural gas.

Any plans for personal (home) sized units? I'd love to get off our power grid as we have daily outages and brown-outs that kill electronics happen a couple times a year. (And yes, I'm in the US, and in the middle of a hefty power grid but according to the power company, we have problematic squirrels).

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

#703

Post by eah13 »

zarify wrote: post #431
martindale wrote: post #229

Coursefork ( http://coursefork.org ) -- github for education. We're trying to open-source the entire education system, starting with creating an easy way for materials and processes to become "forkable". - Fork, for example, an MIT OCW course. - Make modifications. - Submit a pull request back to MIT with your changes, or, just teach from your own fork.

This looks awesome, I hope it's successful. Are you planning on keeping it slide-based or incorporating other types of media in there as well?

Hey there- cofounder of coursefork here.

Other types of media are very important to successful teaching, so they're very important to us. We're rolling out updates soon that will support not just other media types but nested organization of courses so you can have multiple sessions. All part of refining that alpha :)

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

#704

Post by blueblob »

sycren wrote: post #450
kirk21 wrote: post #98

Tool for academic researchers: beta.bohrresearch.com It is cool because it helps academic researchers to spend more time on their research.

Seen Write Latex? www.writelatex.com Seems like an ideal partnership opportunity.

also www.sharelatex.com is almost the same and there is an open source project called flylatex that is trying to provide something similar: http://alabidan.me/2012/07/31/flylatex-a-real-time-collabora... This is not the github link because people always want screenshots, but has a link to it.

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

#705

Post by mafuyu »

samweinberg wrote: post #615
mafuyu wrote: post #489

I'm working on a credit card sized e-paper device. It has an Arduino, USB, Real Time Clock, and a battery, and fits in your wallet. Still doing hardware designs. Some potential applications: * Replace all the barcodes in your wallet (loyalty/membership) * Google Auth TOTP * QR Codes (links/BTC wallets) * Interactive nametag * e-book/text display * date/time display with wireless phone sync over BTLE * act as a USB de…

This sounds pretty cool. Would the hardware be open source so that other people can build their own?

Yeah, definitely. The whole point would be to have a completely open hardware design and software library so that people can build off of it.

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

#706

Post by sreejithr »

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #409

I'm writing a book about the many ways well-intentioned scientists can (and usually do) screw up statistics: http://www.refsmmat.com/statistics/ I started when I was an undergraduate physics major. My entire statistics education consisted of thirty minutes being told not to use R^2. I started reading about statistical abuses and realized that I would probably have committed most of them had I published research -- my…

Interesting. My statistics knowledge has become rusty lately. I want to re-learn the basics before reading this. Can you tell me any resource (doesn't necessarily have to be a book)?

P.S: I'm interested in knowing stuff like 'why square-root of variance is standard deviation?". Concepts.

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

#707

Post by shuzchen »

Deejahll wrote: post #696
shuzchen wrote: post #210

Recommendation engine as a service ( http://savant-api.com/ ) -- absolutely nothing public yet, except a fancy d3 powered widget that has nothing to do with the service. It's cool because I'm hoping to make collaborative filtered recommendations easy to obtain for small outfits.

Will your recommendation algorithm be public or secret? Will it be customizable by your users? You mention a bulk import. Will you provide a bulk export, or will I have to keep my own backup database to avoid lock-in? I see in your API example a bucket, a source, and a target. Would you consider a "value" field, for graphs with weighted edges? (The question is moot if I can't modify the recommendation algorithm to em…

It'll use standard algorithms, although the MVP will only have one available (using pearson currently). My goal is to make various alogrithms eventually available, and perhaps some mechanism to select the best automatically (e.g., selecting the best method based on how sparse or dense the graph is).

As for bulk export, yes in the sense of "download all the calculated recommendations" (perhaps you want to dump that to a local db to access that data directly, rather than rely on hitting my api every time you need something), but not "download all the data exactly as I put it in". For the most part, the data you put into my service should already exist in your own database (what products your users have purchased, what products your users elected as liking). In addition, you'll likely want to use a one-way hash to hash sources (especially if you use usernames or email addresses to uniquely identify users).

I probably won't launch with the ability to add weights to edges, although that's probably one of the first post MVP features on my todo list.

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

#708

Post by mindcrime »

gregdetre wrote: post #673
mindcrime wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no AI expert, but after reading both Hawkins' On Intelligence and Kurweil's How To Create A Mind , I'm pretty sold on the idea that our minds are basically pattern-matching machines. Lately I've been trying to spend a lot of time "thinking about thinking" and recognizing how I form thoughts, relate to memories, etc. I am not super familiar with Hofstadter's ideas, since I haven't (yet) finished even GEB, but the…

Cool! Drop me a line at greg at gregdetre dot co dot uk Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies ch 4-6 are the best introduction to his modeling work. I can't recommend them highly enough.

Excellent, I'll look into getting a copy of that. I have several of his other books (GEB, I Am A Strange Loop, Metamagical Themas, etc.) but only got about 1/3rd of the way through GEB before setting it aside to focus on other stuff for "a while". Unfortunately "a while" has turned into over a year now, so I guess it's time to get back to it. :-)

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

#709

Post by collyw »

mafuyu wrote: post #489

I'm working on a credit card sized e-paper device. It has an Arduino, USB, Real Time Clock, and a battery, and fits in your wallet. Still doing hardware designs. Some potential applications: * Replace all the barcodes in your wallet (loyalty/membership) * Google Auth TOTP * QR Codes (links/BTC wallets) * Interactive nametag * e-book/text display * date/time display with wireless phone sync over BTLE * act as a USB de…

I don´t see why you would use one if those when almost everyone has a phone in their pocket these days. Usually with and app or NFC chip that will do those things.

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

#710

Post by imtu80 »

derwiki wrote: post #294

CameraLends ( https://www.cameralends.com ) -- AirBnB for cameras, rent cameras and lenses from local photographers. It's cool because: - sharing feels good - if you have camera gear, you're probably not using it all the time - it's a way earn back cash from lending out gear - it's a side project that I've bootstrapped this year :)

I like your idea, I was thinking about it other day. I am working on my private pilot license and in a month or so, I will be doing my first solo. I want to record it but then I don't want to spend too much buying a new goPro. It would be nice, if I could rent it for few days for fraction of cost. I am sure there is a market for it.
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