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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#11

Post by graystevens »

superhuzza wrote: post #10
graystevens wrote: post #9

I’m working on a skin for developer laptops so that you can apply those sweet conference and startup stickers. No more risking your resale value, or even physically risking damage to your expensive MacBook. I want the skins to be identical to the original laptop material so that they are practically invisible. So for the MacBooks, a silver aluminium sticker (or space grey etc.) I’ve done a proof of concept and it wor…

I don't really understand, how is this different than any of the other laptop skins on the market? Couldn't I just get a blank one from alibaba or whatever and use that?

Edited to explain a little further - missed out a key point that they’d match then original style of the laptop.

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

#13

Post by mattbierner »

I’m using an old paper tape punch machine to print out (5% of) the human genome. The punches are from the early 80s, and it’s really neat to be able to physically see each bit of data. The plan is to fill up a room with the punched tape, sort of mirroring a strand of dna and giving you a sense of just how large the genome actually is.

Unfortunately I’m having a hell of a time finding space to print in. May just end up finding some commercial warehouse space on Craigslist

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

#14

Post by admiralEyebrows »

graystevens wrote: post #9

I’m working on a skin for developer laptops so that you can apply those sweet conference and startup stickers. No more risking your resale value, or even physically risking damage to your expensive MacBook. I want the skins to be identical to the original laptop material so that they are practically invisible. So for the MacBooks, a silver aluminium sticker (or space grey etc.) I’ve done a proof of concept and it wor…

I'm interested! How did the proof of concept turn out? Any chance you could make to order...

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

#17

Post by roryisok »

barryrandall wrote: post #8

I’m tinkering with combining liquid cooling with waste heat electricity generation as a way to cut down on datacenter energy use. I think it’s cool because datacenters consume 1-2% of all electricity generated worldwide, and roughly half of that goes to air conditioning. If it’s viable, it might make a measurable dent in CO2 emissions.

That's amazing. I had no idea data centers used so much!

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

#18

Post by roryisok »

cjen wrote: post #7

I’m making a permissively licensed json/whatever encoding you’d like English dictionary by parsing Wiktionary. There’s a beta demo type thing at https://www.mostaccioli.club if you’re interested.

Nice, been looking for an open source dictionary!

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

#19

Post by joemanaco »

I’m working on Tiny Thor:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bGrNjyV5PhE

It’s cool because it’s the game I always wanted to make since I was a teenager. What’s even cooler is that two heroes of my youth are doing it together with me: Henk Nieborg (Pixel Artist) and Chris Hülsbeck (Music).

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

#20

Post by rickbutton »

I'm working on a tiling window manager for Windows:

https://workspacer.org/

In another life I worked in a mostly linux environment, and developed on linux, where I used xmonad as a window manager. Switching to windows for a new job several years ago made that super painful. I use workspacer every day at work, and sometimes at home, and it mostly works! It crashes sometimes, and super DOES NOT LIKE IT if you reattach monitors (think laptop), but a restart of the application usually solves it.

The cool part: the configuration file is actually just C#, so you can configure it with a similar level of power that you would configure xmonad (or dwm) with (like implementing custom layouts, etc). I have not solidified the configuration API yet though, and have some plans to switch some major things up, so the road is a bit rocky for the time being.

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