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

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741–750 of 786 posts

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

#741
post #709
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.

Indeed, smartphones can do a lot of things, but not one thing particularly well. My original goal with this design was to replace the 'card wallet' apps for phones, as the barcodes never seemed to scan very well through the glass screens. I've narrowed it down since then to be more for toying around with Arduino/e-paper development, at least for this iteration.

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

#742
post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can't release a minimum viable product in aviation since any product defect will mean death. Do you think the increasing popularity of whole-aircraft parachute systems (which I note is an option on the SD-1) will improve the situation? It's my impression the Cirrus gets away with being hard to recover from a spin by making parachute deployment the standard recovery procedure.

I think the whole parachute system affords the pilots, and in my case the family, a better assurance of safety. My fiancé has a fear of flying and the parachute does help qualm those fears a bit. Side note, have you ever tried to put a cirrus into a spin? It's difficult, iv'e tried. I think that has more to do with Cirrus passing the regulation than anything else.

The only thing I've flown is a hang glider, but I have some interest in aviation and I read a bit about the things I might be able to afford some day. I find these especially appealing: http://velocityaircraft.com

I've read that the Cirrus is designed to resist spins by essentially having the outer third or so of the wings, where the ailerons are fly at a lower angle of attack. I've also read a couple reports online by pilots claiming they didn't have much trouble getting a Cirrus to spin intentionally. In online discussions about the Cirrus, I saw it claimed that very few pilots successfully recover from accidental spins, so designing an aircraft to resist spins and including instructions to use the parachute strikes me as very reasonable.

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

#743
Quickbeam (https://github.com/ChadSki/Quickbeam) and Halolib (https://github.com/ChadSki/halolib.py)

Together, these comprise a Halo modding tool which can edit the game while it's running, which is also why it's cool.

Additionally, whereas previous editors have usually hardcoded functionality into the editor, all of Quickbeam's functionality is implemented in the fully-scriptable Halolib, written in Python.

Ultimately I would like Quickbeam to become the Emacs of Halo editors.

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

#745
LikeMind (http://getlikemind.com) -- an easy and friendly way to meet likeminded people around you.

Demo: http://getlikemind.com/discover

It's cool because: * it's not a dating social network, so if you won't get spammed with people telling how beautiful your body is or how much they want to sleep with you (unless you make a profile with this purpose in mind) * it's about doing stuff, so you can finally meet a running buddy you wanted or fellow foodies to cook together, or just talk and share ideas, no pressure! * our iPhone app is beautiful and delightful to use, because we keep our users in mind, always * our team is super small (we have basically 4 permanent workers, an intern and a... dog :D)

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

#746
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting stuff. What are your thoughts on the I2P darknet, the Syndicate system, and why are they inadequate in your opinion?

I do appreciate their existence, but Aether is something different: it requires no configuration, and it tries to do one thing, and do it well. This is not a darknet. There is only two things you can do in Aether, to read and to write text. This is an intentional restriction that shapes all the design decisions. This is closer to BitTorrent than Tor.

Very cool. I guess I need to invest time in this. Why must people keep producing such cool work and consuming my time. :-)

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

#747
post #714

Blogvio ( http://www.blogvio.com ) - add beautiful widgets to your website. It's cool because you don't need to do any coding to add beautiful and custom galleries, video players, mp3 players, and any other types of widgets to your website. Just copy/paste an embed code and you're done. This helps you a lot especially if you're an agency or freelancer, or if you're using a publishing tool such as Wix, SquareSpace, We…

It's a cool tool! I used it a few weeks ago to create some slick picture widgets.

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

#748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but I still don't quite understand. How are people going to engage with me? Does your system tweet / follow people for me?

No, I'm sorry! The "social etiquette" on each social media channel is different to begin a conversation. For Twitter, it can be as simple as a "favorite". The system doesn't tweet or follow people.

Ah! I can see it at work now. I sure have favorited a lot of stuff recently :)

One thing I noticed is that it favorites some things that don't make a whole lot of sense. For example, I have a 'bitcoin' campaign. It favorites Russian spam links and random BTC arbitrage "results" along with some more reasonable type stuff. Is there any way for me to tailor these results a bit?

For example, does it recognize my behavior and favorite similar items? Or if I add keywords to the campaign, will it limit results a bit more?

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

#749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry it's so confusing. If you created a campaign then it is already working. There's nothing else for you to do inside the product. Now all you have to do is interact with the people that are starting to engage with you. It's not an instant thing. Our system detects when relevant conversations are going on using fancy algorithms based around machine learning, sentiment analysis and POS tagging.

But what does it "do". What is causing these people to start engaging with me? (I signed up and am completely bewildered)

It favorites things for you on Twitter.

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

#750

Laser projection. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x034jVB1avs (Pong on a 20 story building, billboards, etc.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S5_v2By3Ec (Multiple laser projectors) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m-A9LvPbmg (Canny edge detector) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XTi-jf-ans (Asteroids on a 4 story building) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF_OCvjq3ps (Reddit's Snoo on a 20 story building) I've just added…

Having a github or a website to follow this would be neat. I wouldn't mind playing a game of chess on the side of a building.

https://github.com/echelon/laser-testbed

You can also find more stuff that he's done at his website, http://brand.io/

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