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

HMO: Help Me Out

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 192 posts

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#161

Post by cottonseed »

pandamcbonesaw wrote: post #157
cottonseed wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know! Systems where there are rigid notions of angle, distance and position are generally thought to be geometric, not topological. However, often a topological viewpoint can be useful even in solving geometric problems, e.g. circuit autorouting. What are the outstanding problems in unwrapping 3d models (I have no idea what that is) / texture projection?

cottonseed -- do you have a dummy email address at which I can contact you? I work for a startup that leverages topology for data analysis, and we are hiring.

My email is in my profile.

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#162

Post by svetha »

HMO: I run an NGO and am looking for a voice biometrics service to use for caller authentication that can be subscribed to monthly instead of having to pay a large upfront setup fee or annual fee. Would really appreciate any ideas. Thanks!

Email in profile.

How I can help: User testing, designing focus groups, help with payment integration, and general brainstorming.

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#163

Post by Madsn »

HMO/HYO (e-mail in profile)

Short version:

Looking for mentor/peers interested in working on hobby projects in a wide range of programming languages/frameworks - main goal here is to reach a level of decent developer efficiency in many different technologies.

I don't mind if I'm contributing in some way to a startup without being paid, or an open source project, assuming of course the work is educational for me. It's a balance, if I am getting a lot of good mentoring, I wouldn't mind doing some tedious tasks every now and then (documentation etc), because overall I am likely learning more than I would on my own.

Details / longer version:

I'm a software engineer, based in Denmark (Aarhus), completed university roughly a year ago. I don't get to do much actual coding in my job (the coding itself is mostly outsourced), and the little coding I do for work is Java. In my free time I enjoy working on hobby projects or thinking up projects I would like to do - my backlog of project ideas is quite long :). Lately I've gotten to a point where I start actually finishing my projects, where previously I would move on to the next thing before getting far. Projects so far have been nothing with any monetary value, strictly for fun/learning.

The problem is I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of valuable experience, motivation and fun by doing these things alone. I'm not looking for somebody to help me with MY projects, I'm looking for some person or group who I can share my progress with and follow their projects, possibly joining up to work on the same project if interests collide on something.

Topics I'm interested in learning more about (italic = no practical experience with language/platform yet):

- Functional programming languages (especially Clojure, Erlang and Haskell at the moment)

- Web frameworks (django, rails, grails and similar frameworks for other languages)

- Mobile development (Android, maybe Tizen - not iOS)

- Non-relational DBMS's (Cassandra, Riak, Mongo, Couch etc)

- Designing architecture for high-availability / scalability

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#164

Post by benjamincburns »

crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #117

HMO: I've got ADHD something fierce and, even when medicated, it takes me a long time to organize my thoughts in a way for others to understand. I need to process my notes for the video linked to below, identify the problems being discussed, as well as how a hackerspace can solve (or begin to solve) them. I've tried to get people to help me with this, but every attempt gets sidetracked by people wanting to debate whe…

What's your time frame for this? I'm really tied up through Monday the 21st, but if you contact me via Skype or Hangouts (see profile) on the 22nd or later I'd be glad to help.

Also you might not remember me, but I think we met at a Startup Weekend in Baton Rouge in 2011? Maybe it was 2010? Either that or some other similar event in NOLA. I'm in Christchurch New Zealand now, but I miss Louisiana something fierce.

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#165

Post by benjamincburns »

cottonseed wrote: post #12

I love the idea for this thread. Contact information in my profile. Help me out: I just finished a PhD in math. Before that, I did a bunch of tech startups. I'm not staying in academia, nor am I looking for a job right away. Here's some of the things I'm thinking or would like to talk about: - I haven't done much hacking in about 7 years. Loosely speaking, I'm looking to bring my new math/analytical skills to bear wh…

If you have any interests in road network routing (tons of interesting topological problems there) we might be able to help each other out. This is where about 90% of my time is spent.

As for interests, however...

Feel free to get in touch with me to talk EDA and EE stuff as well. I'm presently a bit fed up with EDA usability, and I'd love to discuss ideas for how to move low-cost EDA away from "mspaint" and toward REPL.

I'm also very interested in building a tight-loop GNSS/inertial navigation system from scratch using an RF front-end (MAX2769) and a 9DOF IMU on-a-chip. I believe all current DIY inertial nav projects like this use absolute position output from an off-the-shelf GPS. I think by including inertial information during the signal processing phase it's possible to get accurate and precise absolute and relative positioning.

Along those same lines, I think it'd be cool to try to build a single-station RTK GPS by measuring carrier phase across multiple GNSS systems/bands. I'm not 100% sure how to go about this however, but I have a feeling it involves a tunable multi-band receiver or multiple single-band receivers feeding into an FPGA.

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#166

Post by notduncansmith »

snide wrote: post #148
thaumaturgy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! I watched the full video and clicked around your site a bit. I think this is fantastic. It's just anecdotal, but I've met quite a few people who are far more comfortable in HTML/CSS than they are in any backend work, so although this doesn't count as market validation, I don't think you're targeting too small of a segment. In fact, I had someone pick my brain just a few days ago because they want to build a prof…

Thank you for the comment. The good news is I feel the same way about the CLI and the video. The video is temporary as we work towards a proper launch. For now there's a few dozen guinea pigs helping us polish the functionality. The CLI will take a little longer as our small three-man team is stretched a bit. Maybe in a few months. Also agree about the theming. The nice part at least is that theming in theory is very…

You might find this helpful with creating a GUI: http://appjs.com/

With Webhook being Node (I'm guessing based on the distribution via npm?), you'll feel right at home. As a Node guy myself, I found it immensely valuable when I was building a toy desktop app.

Great job with this by the way. I started on a similar project a few months ago (fell by the wayside), and it makes me really happy to see someone execute it, especially this well. Keep it up!

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#167

Post by notduncansmith »

codezero wrote: post #136

Help Me Out: I left academia to come to Silicon Valley into a non-technical role, but I want to get back into technical work. The help I need is mainly in how I should market myself to prospective employers. I have a technical background, mainly in support and quality assurance, but I'd like to get my hands more dirty with a full software engineering role. I need some guidance with deciding what to focus on when prep…

My experience with most hiring processes is that you should learn about classic CS stuff (data structures, algorithms, Big O, etc). Unfortunately, my experience is also that these things are not of much use during day-to-day web development.

If you want some help with brushing up on actual web dev skills, email me: hello at duncanmsmith.com. I'd be happy to do a Skype/Google Hangout/phone call sometime this week, and point you to some great resources that helped me a lot when I was first getting started. I can also help you compile a list of topics to research so you can build your knowledge base (the body of knowledge required to sound smart in a room full of web devs is INSANE).

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#168

Post by notduncansmith »

# How I Can Help

I have a lot of knowledge in the web space. I specialize in front-end development, as well as Node.js on the back-end. I work at a web dev shop and have a lot of experience teaching and mentoring new developers, as well as resolving interpersonal conflicts. I'm also constantly tweaking my dev environment (editors, build tools, technologies, etc) and, as a developer, have a mini-obsession with productivity hacks; so I can help there (not usually a burning pain but if you need help, hit a brotha up).

I am also a designer (landing pages, UI/UX, IA, branding, and print) and am happy to help with whatever design-related issues you might have.

Finally, I have experience with online advertising and guerrilla marketing; if you're having trouble figuring out how to reach your customers (or figuring out who your customers are) I can help.

# Help Me Out

My idea: I've been thinking lately about building something called Startup Fantasy League. The idea is to give people a gamified platform for making pretend investments in startups.

Why (for context): I'd like to get into angel investing later in life (when I have the financial means) but I don't want to wait until then to start practicing.

Where I need help: I'm having trouble figuring out exactly how to accelerate the lifecycle of real world investments into a game-friendly timescale. I don't want players to have to actually wait 10 years before they see returns.

I'd like to give players a starting fund (say 5m), and then let them "spend" that capital by selecting from real investments (e.g. "Jason Calacanis invested $X in Swell Radio").

However, once they've spent their initial capital (which I imagine might happen somewhat quickly as new players try out the platform and hopefully enjoy it), I'm not sure how to keep them engaged. I imagine status updates on companies they've invested in would be nice, but that doesn't give them much room to interact with the platform. Thus, maybe players should get more capital whenever their startups are doing well? This isn't a very realistic model of how investing actually works, of course, so I'm looking for other options.

I want to keep this as realistic as possible (since ideally I'd like to practice with it myself) but I do also want it to be fun.

Advice from anyone with game-building or investing experience would be especially helpful. Thanks guys!

My email is hello at duncanmsmith.com.

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#169

Post by stevejalim »

vertex-four wrote: post #151
auxbuss wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's a discovery. I'm in Ledbury and had no idea that little oasis existed. I'll drop you an email, and hopefully we can meetup in the next week for a chat over a coffee/beer.

Woah. I'm in Ledbury for a few months as well. Really funny seeing other people from around here on HN!

vertex-four hit me up on Twitter sometime: @stevejalim

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#170

Post by notduncansmith »

samstave wrote: post #85
streptomycin wrote: post #18

I made a basketball management simulation video game: http://basketball-gm.com/ My original motivation was for fun and learning, but now I have several hundred people playing every day (average 1 hr each) and it's making $600/month in ads. Problem is, I don't know how to take it to the next level. I think my main issues are no marketing knowledge and a complete lack of connections in the video game and sports industr…

" Running a basketball team requires you to make touch decisions. Do you mean TOUGH decisions?

I actually really like the phrase "touch decision", as an alternative to "snap decision".
Post reply on HN