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Ask HN: What are you working on?

374 points by mlejva ↗ HN
I thought it would be interesting to see what are other people working on. Those projects of course might not be ready to be shown you can only describe them and the main problem though.

Project: I am building a neural network which should be able to generate few frames of the video given the preceding and following frames. Currently I am feeding the network with simple videos I have created where is only a single moving pixel. Since I do not have much experience with neural networks I thought this could be good start.

Problem: Up until now I have not realised how hard is to find simple video datasets.

748 comments

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wkoszek
I'm building myself a publishing platform which I'd like to make available to others for $12/yr. It'd be a GUI for static-code generators, where you can write markdown in a browser, hit "publish", and Jekyll/Middleman will generate content for you + push the newly generated article to the GitHub repo. I'm spitting out tools, as a side-effect of that:

https://github.com/wkoszek/lastpass-ansible

https://github.com/wkoszek/ruby_packages

wingerlang
I am basically taking "notes" in the form of an iOS application from language-learning material.

E.g. I needed a chart of some rules in the language, so I added it in the app. Needed a way to search substrings in a wordlist, added it to the app. Flashcards etc.

jasonkester
Problem: My SaaS trialers either convert or expire without me really knowing why.

Solution: Collect data on every action that anybody does during a trial, Bucket finished trialers by "Converted" and "Expired". Visualize that data to find out what motivates trialers to convert. Run crazy ML magic on it to predict outcomes for individual trialers. Act on that information.

About half a day into building, it occurred to me that this is not in any way specific to the one product I was building it for, so I moved the API endpoint out to its own domain. There's a general purpose product there in beta now:

https://unwaffle.com

dharness
Looks really nice but, Youch - the pricing seems kind of steep.

I'm not sure what a participant is, since it only appears in the pricing and nowhere else on the page - but if it is a new user (new signup) then 200 seems a bit large for a hobbyist.

I'd consider a tiny $10 - 20/mo one, sans "Assisted onboarding"

jasonkester
Ah, but consider the value of a 1% uptick in conversion rate.

Imagine you have a little $10/month SaaS, with 100 trial signups a month, for which the service in question is outrageously expensive.

Assuming one of your users sticks around for a year, his Lifetime Value (LTV) is $120. And assuming there exists some low-hanging fruit optimization that can get you a tiny 1% uplift in conversions. That translates to (0.01 * 100 * 120) = $120 in extra revenue for your startup each month. So even if you spend the rest of your days just looking at our pretty charts and graphs, you're still doubling your investment.

So yeah, it's priced high because it makes you a lot of money.

pattle
I'm working a platform that gives athletes advanced stats and analysis on their activities by using their GPS data. Think Strava but aimed at the more serious athlete.

http://www.scinder.io

I'm now learning React Native to launch a mobile app and working on segments and routes functionality which is quite touch.

swah
I'm also learning RN - are you (planning on) sharing code with the web version (regular react)?
pattle
That's the plan. At the moment the web version is built using KnockoutJS which I wish I hadn't used so I'm looking to move over to React. Once I've done that I'll definitely share code between them.

Ideally this would work by setting up a private npm repo and then I can share components between the two.

fiftyacorn
Interesting project

I think the focus on analysis is more important that the statistics - i mean there is so much training data out their, and hardly any of its used. Ideally I would want the application to highlight the area of the quickest gain - and factor in training sessions off the back of this?

pattle
Thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it. Completely agree with your point on focusing on analysis. Making sense of an athletes training data is where the real value is going to come from. Rest assured it's in the pipeline :)
codegeek
I am working on an Open Source Online Learning Platform. Think of it as Ed-x or Moodle alternative but technically more modern with focus on UI and UX. The idea is that it should be able to cater to multiple audiences including more traditional style LMS or simple entrepreneurs who want to setup courses and sell them online. The core will always be simple and light while there will be provisions for extensions if this thing becomes successful.
jmstfv
Project: A website containing programming projects accompanied by explanations, unit tests and etc.. (a la tutorials) to help beginners to get off the ground quickly.

Audience: It is aimed at learners who already know the syntax of a language, but are unsure/unable to start a project of their own.

More info: I have written more about it on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/62r1wr/i_...

e12e
This looks like a nice fill-in between "How I start":

http://howistart.org/

and the aosa-book "500-lines or less":

http://aosabook.org/en/500L/introduction.html

(and maybe with a hint of rosettacode in the mix: http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code )

I'd love to see some collaborative projects like this - idiomatic/recommended setups of editing/debug/release, as well as approach to coding.

I notice that Python is still absent from the "How I start"-series - something like https://github.com/pypa/sampleproject might form part of a starting point (also the Flask "flaskr" tutorial sets up a bare-bones python package, but needs minor adjustments for windows, as I've noticed using it for a small course on web programming - I'll have to find the time to file an issue and patch).

The great thing about such projects being open to contribution, is that aside from the bike-shedding, one of the best ways to get a correct answer to a problem quickly, is to post the wrong answer on the Internet.

hardcore96
I'm currently working on a webpage that describes central topics in digital communications, via short python programs and their generated plots, rather than stuffing one equation after the other. I'd like to extend it to more more simulations of wireless systems and in general write more content. Eventually, if people like it I can imagine creating an eBook out of it.

http://dspillustrations.com

Risse
Project: I am creating a database of all Finnish Instagram users. It's been a long and hard task to do, but it's currently looking pretty good, I have over 250k accounts that are considered Finnish and their posts data. Now to actually think what I will do with this data...

More info: I am currently building a website to showcase the data, but in the mean time I have a Instagram account where I for example once a weekly update what are the most popular hashtags in the Finnish Instagram community. https://www.instagram.com/iigeesuomi/

Brajeshwar
While working with clients and partners at Alaris Prime, my co-founder and I realized a big under-served market. These are projects that are too large for UpWorks, Freelancer, Gigster, Guru, Project4Hire but too low for IDEO, Leo Burnett, Razorfish, and other digital agencies of the world.

When we work with our customers we make sure that their projects get done. Even with the involvement of other partners, we make sure that we take the responsibility of our customers’ project. Sometimes, our customers go on a vacation while we execute the projects with highly qualified professionals that has been vetted by our team.

http://WorkSigma.com is an evolution of that pattern, and we want to formalize it, make it big, and be able to help more customers. We want to be a trusted place to get projects built - be it for the web or connected mobile devices.

P.S. Minimum 20% discount for all HackerNews users for the year 2017. Use code "HackerNews2017".

drusepth
FWIW, the product by Upwork Global Inc (formerly Elance-oDesk) is now "Upwork", not "UpWorks". May want to adjust that if this is part of a pitch elsewhere. :)
camtarn
I'm building software for floating wave and tidal platforms - both to run on the industrial computers on the device (PLC C89 with no prints or malloc) and also Python logging/DB/analysis code. Currently I'm also speccing long range wifi antennas and industrial networking gear - got to be a jack of all trades in this job :)
bobwaycott
Project: An easy-to-use, all-in-one tool to help small service business owners run and grow their businesses. Want to ultimately teach people how to run a healthy business as a byproduct of using tools that help them do just that. MVP was just launched 3 weeks ago.

https://workweek.com

jlmarquezg
I´m currently working in a website that shows most relevant political tweets attending to favorites, rts and when were written. Currently I support 10 countries and I`m adding new people to monitor quite frequently.

http://www.overt.news

LeanderK
i am a student and i recently started an organisations that provides short bootcamps (1 to 3 days), tech-talks and hackathons for other students at our university[1]. While i think my university provides a very challenging education, it's short on teaching practical skills (like python, react etc.). This is ok, the university should focus on what they are good at and not "waste their time" with teaching frameworks etc. We don't have any experiences with these bootcamp-style formats yet, maybe one can chime in and give us advice how to best approach it. We want to provide it for free and rely on other students who want to share their knowledge.

[1] beware, german! also we are reworking the website: https://hackundsoehne.de

nl
Defining, detecting and ultimately stopping fake news.
jacquesm
That sounds very interesting. Tea?
xchaotic
That sounds very generic too. How do you even define fake? How do you know it's not fake?
jacquesm
How do you tell spam from ham? How to tell a forgery from a real painting?

The answer is: classification is now for some problem domains a tractable problem where before it required human intervention. Telling fake news from real news requires a body of data (doable), a classification algorithm (mostly a solved problem) and the will, time and other resources to actually do it.

To me it sounds very much as something worth doing and possible, that Google with their vast resources appears to drop the ball here (see Google News, which gives equal billing to ham and spam alike) leaves room for an outsider to go and tackle that problem in a decisive way.

I can see all kinds of possibilities and this to me seems like a very worthwhile task.

nl
How do you even define fake?

That's a very good question, which is why I included it. I like one definition I saw circulating which revolved around "news items intended to deceive". I agree that is too hard to pin down to be useful.

How do you know it's not fake?

There's two way I could read this. The first is distinguishing newly emerging news stories for which the facts don't exist and the second is how to automatically check.

Both are valid questions. For the first, I don't know. For the second there is an entire field of computational fact checking, as well as a range of other features.

gnode
I think a better question to ask is: how do we structure discourse around content to make our society better immune to the proliferation of low-value content? (Whether that be fake news, clickbait, disguised advertising, etc.) Also, how do we do this without creating political silos, each with their own propaganda?
nl
I think that this is a really good question too.
nl
That sounds very interesting.

Well it's ambitious, so it has that going for it...

Tea?

I'm not sure I get the reference. Yes?

joshuaheard
I think he means you can sit around and talk about it for a long time, but will not get anything actually done.
projecteterna
Yesterday, I published a library for automatically generating 3D models. Input is a simple list of unordered, undirected vertices and edges (soup). Output is a triangulated mesh (as vertex, normal, and index arrays), with consistent winding order, and per-edge weighted normals. When it's done the graph analysis once, then you can give it any set of vertices with the same topology, and it will instantly give you back adjusted normals. Or, you can pass a deforming function or lambda, and it will apply it to the vertices, and give you that mesh instead.

https://github.com/andy-wood/AutoMesh

haraball
I'm building a quick feedback/correction web app for stuff you write. I'm also building a nap/meditation app that tracks your heart rate.

Both projects are built with React, with a side goal of staying up to date on the latest developments there.

mherrmann
A cross-platform dual-pane file manager [1]. It made the front page and top 10 on Product Hunt last month. I'm busy implementing feature requests and figuring out a way to grow it sustainably.

[1]: https://fman.io

NicoJuicy
Ps. Search everything on Windows searches through NTFS. Which is insanely fast ( thought it could be usefull)
drizzzler
This seems cool! If you'd like some design/growth help, I may be the right guy for that. My email is in my profile.
joshuaheard
Feature requests (windows): a right-click context menu, remove confirmation dialog box on drag and drop.
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gkya
An idea: have an unobstructive popup that says "hit ESC in 5 seconds to undo <the action>", and do the move/copy only if the user doesn't press that key in the specified time. Maybe use backspace instead of ESC because the MacBooks' touch bar thingy. Allow to disable/ change the interval.
neurocroc
I am building a search engine for a mind map I am working on.

(https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge-map)

I want to make a collaborative mind map where one can see all the knowledge of the world at a glance and be provided with the resources on learning any of the topics there.

I really dislike the black box nature of Google/DuckDuckGo where you first have to know the question before getting an answer. It would be amazing to actually visualise everything and let users explore rather than search and wander around.

mezod
really cool stuff!

PS: damned, I had already starred it on gh :D

_pdp_
At the moment I am working on the next iteration of the secapps market with the intention to make information security testing simpler and more accessible for developers of all kinds.

The last iteration, an appstore-style application, failed to achieve the grand vision, hence why the remodel.

You can find the new work here:

https://market.secapps.com

All tools are free to use with the caveat that in the future there will be some sort of licensing model while still allowing to take advantage of all tools for free as long as not for commercial use.

I hope that helps.