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Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did I just read?

I'm not qualified to say this, so this isn't a diagnosis, but the post strikes me as similar in tone to the postings of a paranoid schizophrenic who regularly used to post on a forum I visited. Completely convinced they're on the verge of uncovering something that will "change history" yet very difficult to follow the detail of what they're saying.

Who knows. They used to say people who think the government is saying on people are tin foil loonies, now everyone is worried about privacy. Don't see the reason to assume this most be crazy. Journalists as a whole have that "when I break this story everything is gonna change" mood regularly

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is sad that you would rather believe the parent has mental health issues, rather than entertain the possibility that yes, someone is actually doing something effective against powerful corrupt people, and that requires creative thinking. To me, it echoes "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" by La Boétie. Powerful people are just people. They are powerful because we are collectively granting them that power. This is…

It’s fairly obvious to infer that OP is experiencing some type of psychosis or schizotypical behavior

It's fairly obvious that actual psychiatrists make that diagnosis on a lot more than a HN post

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#823
An invite-only social media site designed for "thoughtful, actionable conversation" free of ads, trolls and brigading. It's a bunch of domain experts, silicon valley insiders, New York finance folks, etc tired of social media and chat systems, and taking apart complex topics.

We're building on Zulip and for now it's also open source.

inviteme@forecast.chat if you care. Please include some links to thoughtful social media posts you've made.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#824
Have two of these labor of love, don't really care if it takes off types of projects right now.

First is Sonic Postcards - a digital postcard and playlist of my favorite music for the week. Pretty much doing it as an excuse to find new music, learn about the artists, and keep a writing habit going.

https://www.sonicpostcards.io/

Second is Streamster. OSS lib designed to make working with natural resource related APIs easier. Main goal being to provide an easier way to get the data and have it returned in a more consistent format. Allow devs to leverage the data and not spend all their mental bandwidth wrangling with it.

https://github.com/streamster/streamster

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#825

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been using "the ends justify the means" to justify all sorts of unethical behavior, not the least of which includes torture, genocide, and wars. Let's not go down that ethical reasoning wormhole. As for his story, my read on it must be much different from your own. Because from what I am seeing, this is far more about the judge's husband than anyone else, and it is to right a sense of personal injustice t…

Speaking of genocide, torture and war, since this topic is about german politics, it might be good to remember a certain time in that countries history, when the law was in support of all of these things. Breaking the law cannot be equated with ethical behavior. Social engineering is indeed a method, wether it is morally objectable needs to be argued and not assumed out of the gate.

I don’t think I made that argument, in fact, my comment was made specifically without the qualifier of it being legal vs. illegal. Manipulation (which let’s face it, social engineering is a fancy way of saying) is a pretty solid example of an unethical behavior depending on your ethical world view. Utilitarian? Great, you must also think torture is acceptable so long as it saves lives. Deontological ethical world views might have something different to say, speaking of Germans (e.g., Kant).

Regardless, I think contriving scenarios where you think someone may act corruptly just to catch them doing so is equally as unethical as a police officer encouraging someone to commit a terrorist act then arresting them once they do.

It is manipulative, may not have happened otherwise if not for the original actor, and is akin to saying “I hope you don’t behave like I’d expect a human to instinctually behave if put in a corner”.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#826

I've been working on a project that aggregates data for every public transport provider in the country (Slovenia) and presents it as a simple API, along with an application to find rides with as few clicks as possible (without having to check every provider's website). This has involved tiring meetings with city officials convincing them to give us access to the data and writing scraping bots where they weren't convi…

In the Netherlands we have https://9292.nl/ . It is awesome, I can plan a trip and it will show me how long I have to walk, whats buses/trains I have to take, and I can also buy tickets for all the different providers. Almost everyone here in NL uses it when they plan a trip, its even useful when you do this trip daily because it shows delays, maintenance and other important information.

Is 9292's data open? The parent commenters' project sounds more similar to http://www.openov.nl/.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should specify there's a difference of being in the top percentage of people in a field, and just being very good at that field. With sports, physical attributes are more important but even if you're not gonna be in the NBA you can still be quite good, etc. I don't see music as really competitive in that sense though because everyone has different tastes. Once you put in the time and work to learn to produce or pla…

Again, I mostly do agree with you, especially as you get to more creative fields. I think what I would rephrase as is: given my genetic makeup, discipline is more likely to yield benefits using openAI Jukebox rather than guitar or piano. On this topic, if you have not already, one of the best movies I have seen in last couple years: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11423784/ (is on netflix in the US).

"think what I would rephrase as is: given my genetic makeup, discipline is more likely to yield benefits using openAI Jukebox rather than guitar or piano."

I don't agree with this sort of sentiment at all. I'm not talking about benefits as in being in the top % of people in a field- I don't care about that. I'm talking about getting very good and playing with people and/or earning income. Anyone can achieve that with time and work.

The best players that I know all study quite diligently and play/make music literally all the time. They're getting their 10,000 hours in and then some. I'm speaking here as a guitar & bass player but this applies to really any instrument.

Unless you physically or mentally cannot play e.g. the guitar, if you studied it diligently for several years, you would be better than a lot of people who haphazardly study it. By 1-2 years you could already be sitting in and doing small gigs (for bass, a lot sooner, since there's a glut of of amateur guitarists). By 3-4 years of again, diligent study, you would be quite decent/respectable. As far as "making it", that comes down to the above + socializing with musicians + interpersonal skills like being on time, etc.

"Genetic makeup" or "talent" have absolutely zero to do with that unless it's literally impacting your ability to play or practice. All that's needed is discipline to study correctly (and motivation, which goes without saying). And a great many people study poorly.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#828
post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can try to wordsmith and twist the logic all you want. Telling someone “resign and do what I want, or else” is an ultimatum and bordering on blackmail. It is an ultimatum that is directly counter to your stated goal as well, which to “allow the voters to decide”. That’s you deciding for them.

Providing someone a nasty choice isnt neccesarily blackmail or wrong. Imagine you work as a prosecutor. Someone submits fairly strong, and actionable evidence, that your wife has commited a crime your office is required to prosecute. You are legally compelled to excuse yourself, and let someone prosecute, preferably someone not independent of you. If you do, you know your wife will go to prison, and in the process of…

I think the flaw in your logic is the assumption it was an either/or situation. There are a whole lot of options between “resign or face the consequences”, and let’s face it, is destroying someone’s career one way or the other (via by choice or otherwise) really a choice at all?

If you think it is, I’d be curious what your choice would be given the same scenario and whether you felt a bit coerced into your position.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#829

1. Circa 2014 I've created Mapless [1], a Smalltalk persistence framework to remove the Object Relational Impedance Mismatch problem by design so I can quickly prototype or (modify) maintain the persisted objects without caring about mapping. After being abandoned, it suddenly became a life saver. Now it's going for production with humongous load. 2. I'm discretely working in Lobster [2] because I don't like current…

Do you have some instructions, screenshots, or video about the lobster project?

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#830

I'm building wooden benches for bus and light rail stops in my neighborhood. Lots of riders are elderly and find themselves sitting on the curb, feet in the gutter, as they wait for transit. Studies suggest that perceived wait time increases by 30%+ when riders are forced to stand while they wait. There's no cheaper way to shave several minutes off of perceived trip time, for every trip. Inspired by https://www.latim…

I have such a hard time relating to this. In Denmark I feel like 95% of bus stops have some sort of bench, and a lot of them has like a small shed, to get out of the rain in bad weather. It's wild to think that citizens should be adding those themselves. But I guess there's no profit in adding benches to each stop as a bus company.

I used to live in Southern California. Many bus stops have no bench and no weather protection. It can get brutally hot without shade, and since it's a drought area, lots of people get caught without clothing for inclement weather. I think it almost criminal that there's at least no covering for these stops, much less a bench to help wait out such conditions.
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