HN Explorer

Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate? (April 2022)

115 points by cloudsec9 ↗ HN
This thread is similar to the monthly "Who is hiring?" and "Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?" threads.

But this one is for people who don't want to work for money and are not looking for people who want to work for money. But for people who want to work together on cool projects.

For free to make the world better or to start a startup.

If you do, please post your project or your skills!

(Inspired by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30162767 )

124 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 174 ms ] thread
KhoomeiK
I'm actively exploring potential B2B SaaS applications of my ML/NLP research, and would love to collaborate with someone more on the business side who might have knowledge of problem spaces as well as experience in customer discovery.

Please reach out if interested!

https://rpandey.tech

jasfi
I think we're interested in the same questions. I'm on the tech side, but trying to expand my business knowledge. https://lxagi.com
holonsphere
I have maybe 8 years of soft experience working with artists in the creative space (music, video, retro game dev, etc#)and 4 years of experience in b2b enterprise sales in the SaaS space. I had a run through alphalabs and i live in the Pittsburgh area.

My company worked with hundreds of local orgs - schools, hospitals, retail, etc# providing IT services and ive provided warehouse/staffing management related logistics(?) consulting for two fortune 500s. Ive put that same mettle into a handful of other diverse area startups but im too winded to generalize on what that looked like right now.

I just consult in the non-profit sector now. I just got of a covid-19 project and now im on a rain water / neighborhood development leaning one.

To be abundantly transparent, some of my experiences have left me feeling somewhat contentious to the greater industry at large.

I'm usually somewhat adversarial to most CMU alum but you seem like a solid enough dude to speak openly to since you seem like someone who'd be sincere in wanting to be a part of something with a good ethos.

Im fairly tired right now since i just finished replanting 300 strawberry runbers but If you'd like me to share some of my experiences at a later time id be more than glad to share.

hegem0n
I'm a startup CTO, but I've gone deep down the rabbit hole of growth hacking lately. I'm interested in applying some methods I've learned to a new idea.
pbowyer
Looking for Swift, Android and Typescript developers to help with camera-preview, an open source cross-platform embedded camera for Capacitor and Ionic.

I recently got involved and my goal is to add frame processing so you can run object detection and models on the preview frames. If that's interesting to you then go for it! There's a lot of small tasks too to improve the code base.

We're a welcoming community and all contributions are very gratefully received. I take care of the project admin so contributors can focus on what they enjoy.

https://github.com/capacitor-community/camera-preview

mrintellectual
We're a small group of folks working on an open-source project for generating embedding vectors. If you're interested in machine learning or semantic search, we welcome you to join us!

https://github.com/towhee-io/towhee

redskyluan
cool idea, what skillset are you guys looking for?
iforgotmypass
Looking for a C developer with experience in PHP internals (or willingness to dive deeper into PHP internals) to build together a debugger (similar to Xdebug) for production environments.

E-mail in my profile. I'll send more details in e-mail about market, business model, value proposition, etc.

My background consists of a mix of software development, business development and innovation, engineering management and executive roles. Have experience building a start-up.

yoaviram
For those who care about privacy, we're looking for React, backend (AWS) and ML devs, researchers, data scientist, translators, and community builders.

YourDigitalRights.org is a free and open source service which helps people regain control of their online privacy by automating the process of sending data deletion requests to organisations, and then provides guidance on how to ensure that requests are resolved favourably.

We're a registered charity called Conscious Digital.

https://yourdigitalrights.org

holonsphere
What can you share about the community building side of things?
yoaviram
So far we've done very little. That said, there's a lot of energy around the project. People are contributing in various ways, expressing support, writing about it. We'd like to bring it all together. Happy to share more, if you're interested contact us. Email is on the website.
xiaofan
We're actully a group of nerds looking for Go/Cpp engineers familiar with distributed system, database and high performance computing. Vector search is the new trend and let's make something different together~

https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus

imranq
Vector search is getting a lot of attention these days. Why is that?
tartakovsky
Read about pinecone.io. Cut off a neural network that does image classification at the second to last layer and you have a system for creating meaningful vectorial representations. Then if you apply some distance metric to a bunch of these it turns out you can retrieve images that look similar to some query image.

Problem is, scaling and doing this in real-time is hard.

Use cases abound. This was only one. There are a lot of others too. Pinecone, Vespa.AI, Faiss…

Previously this type of tech was only available for the MAANGs of the world. Hope that helps

imranq
Thanks! Very helpful
thirdtrigger
Agreed! You can check out Weaviate too. It includes out of the box vectorization modules
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
hexomancer
I'm working on sioyek, an open source PDF viewer desgined for reading research papers and textbooks. Any contribution is welcome, but I'm mainly looking for maintainers for linux packages.

https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek

DukeBaset
Hi, do you have any idea how one goes about making a liquid mode for mobile pdf readers like the adobe pdf app? I am often commuting and have to read on my mobile but I am limited by the fact that adobe only allows 200 pages or less files to be rendered to liquid mode. I would be interested in helping develop this app ( I am not a programmer by profession but have been learning for a few years on my part time)
hexomancer
Sorry I have no idea about that. But a quick and dirty fix for your problem could be to split your pdf file into multiple files each with less than 200 pages.
rustybolt
I was hoping this would turn out to be more of a 'developers looking to collaborate' instead of a 'looking for developers to work on my idea' thread.

I will post my profile and hope that somebody can suggest a nice project to contribute to.

Anyway, I'm reasonably experienced in C, have some experience in C++, C++, SQL, VHDL, Python, some HTML and Javascript as well. I have a good mathematical basis and some basis in low-level programming (e.g. assembly, mostly x86). I work mostly on Linux and occassionally on windows.

I'm very interested in mathematics and want to learn: APIs for graphics and sound (e.g. win32, x11, OpenGL, ALSA, waveout), digital signal processing. Also very interested in optimization and computational topics such as interval arithmetic, fast approximation/computation of various functions, arbitrary precision arithmetic.

Looking to exchange experience with other developers, both more and less experienced.

[dead] llitaa
[dead]
em-bee
would you share your project here please? that's kind of the point of this topic.
iforgotmypass
Would you kindly share your contact information? My e-mail is visible in the profile.
borjamoya
Probably not the place to post this, but I'm directing and producing a couple of short films and it'd be great to find people who want to help in any aspect of the post-production process: musicians, designers, VFX/3D artists...

If anyone is interested in knowing more about this, please reach me out to hello@borjamoya.com

bambax
Interesting! Email sent.
borjamoya
Thank you!

For those of you asking in the email, I'm working on two genres: (1) Crime/horror. It's basically it's a scene from a feature script I'm writing. The feature is a crime / thriller film, but this specific scene I'm turning into a short leans more towards the horror genre. And (2) Heist film. I'll produce this one after this first one. It's a bit more ambitious so if anyone wants to collaborate on this one it'd be great to start working as soon as possible.

Also if anyone wants to collaborate on the production process on set, I'll be filming these in Madrid, Spain.

HeyLaughingBoy
Do you ever need props built? I was contacted to build something for a film but their deadline was essentially "tomorrow" and would have been impossible to meet. I've done a bunch of similar stuff since then -- embedded controllers for advertising displays and games like you'd find in Chuck-E-Cheese, etc.

Always something I wanted to do more of.

oriettaxx
If you need any help or even just advice on VPN, I am super available (Wireguard only, of course, the best ever) :)
Amir6
Whats the best way to contact you?
jmkr
If anybody is currently doing anything on the Scheme/Clojure side of things around databases, or PL. I'd be interested.

These are longer term goals I have, my shorter term goals are focused on a lot of reading to prepare to start to tackle those things in the future.

Mostly I'd like to build toy projects of stuff we use every day, but from a good starting place, "the right way", not something hacked together over a weekend, but to learn the details that went into them.

Not interested in building another project with another library, but more so writing libraries.

mathgladiator
I'm in the phase of Adama of looking for true believers: https://www.adama-platform.com/

Basically, if you are a front-end dev that wants to have a playful backend for games or collaborative apps, then Adama may be interesting to collaborate on.

EZ-Cheeze
From my recent post: "The thing that could bring the most change to the world is a system that finds everybody a thousand or more best friends based on psychological proximity and compatibility. Don’t tell me it’s impossible to predict whether two people are likely to get along or not based on a bunch of factors that can be analyzed with various techniques including AI. What would the world look like if every single person had a bunch of people who get them because they are almost exactly like them or are highly compatible although different? Imagine having a huge support group that roots for each cause of yours because it’s also theirs. What could you all do together, pulling in the same direction, inspiring each other and contributing your best? I want all of the existing social networks to create a version of this. Create groups out of thin air. You have the data, so use it for something better than serving ads with efficient precision."

I've been developing ideas on how to match people, but I can't code.

I also want a drawing app that hides all my attempts at a stroke and lets me pick the best one AFTER I'm done generating them: http://zeroprecedent.com/lore/flipmark.html

martin dot nenov at gmail dot com

minihat
Have you seen the movie Ron's Gone Wrong? Not trying to make fun of your idea. I just expect you may find this movie especially enjoyable given the problem you are interested in.
erikerikson
Why would you limit it to friendships? Why not to find colleagues? Game theoretic strategy compatibility?

The problem comes in how you'd make it real (i.e. implement) and find adoption.

EZ-Cheeze
It wouldn't be just friends, but that's how I phrased it there. I called it "supporters" in these 280 characters:

"Some people just get along. They are compatible. They mesh.

I think it's possible to predict whether any two people will hit it off, and to create groups composed entirely of highly compatible, highly synergistic people.

What will happen when EVERYONE has a THOUSAND SUPPORTERS?"

And it wouldn't just be friends or supporters, either:

"Just as the system can find those who are your mirror reflection by minimizing adjacency distances, so it can find your very antithesis by maximizing them, as well as anything in-between."

That's from this post which explores implementation: https://zeroprecedent.substack.com/p/a-technique-for-generat...

I think after implementation, adoption is inevitable since the value is truly insane, better than anything else online (unless you're antisocial, etc.)

erikerikson
Okay. The problem is something like "social knowing doesn't naturally scale" but the entirety of the problem is how to make it do so effectively without ill side effect. I'm curious if you've gone the further step on how the system may simply iterate the current state. What ends do you seek? Most important... What have you done to start solving this problem?
EZ-Cheeze
emailed, plus see reply to skywal_l
skywal_l
What would be the kind of data you would need for that? Also, how would you kickstart it? This kind of site needs a huge amount of data to start becoming useful so there is always the problem of recruiting users while at the same time not providing any useful service.
EZ-Cheeze
-start with some rough seed data

-make matches based on our initial hypotheses of data vs action vs outcome

-learn from success/failure of matches

-adjust matching strategy & request more or different data as needed

-search for best predictors by babble and prune [1] with extremely prolific babblers and extremely discerning pruners.

GANs & transformers & hashtables, we'll grow em quickly out of the right SUBSTRATE; I think representation efficacy makes for the biggest performance jumps in machine learning training and inference speed. Constant and well-directed experimentation is key in innovation, let's get all the best people spazzing out constructively on a constant basis

Let a thousand distributed "Bell Labs" type bloom. (If you don't know, Bell Labs is known for many innovations and was ran with a spirit of collaboration, tinkering, and interdisciplinary work. And also it had all the right people in the same spot!)

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/s/pC6DYFLPMTCbEwH8W "Babble creates a constant stream of coarse material, while Prune cuts these ideas harshly without the slightest hint of remorse."

ArneTR
I am doing research on how to measure the energy consumption and thus carbon emission of software.

The toolchain will be open-source and the data free use. Currently it is only a prototype and there are many open research questions to be solved.

If any of you is interested in this topic or would like to connect please feel free to contact me.

Currently we are a team of two and I also have backed the research through my own company and can supply compensation for the open source work. Would love to find like minded people in this domain.

https://github.com/green-coding-berlin/green-metrics-tool / https://www.green-coding.org

ognarb
Do you know about https://eco.kde.org, it's a project under the kde umbrella (but not only for kde) that is sponsored by the German government with the goal of both doing measurements and defining how a eco friendly software should work. Okular was recently awarded the blue angel certification: https://eco.kde.org/blog/2022-03-16-press-release-okular-blu...
ArneTR
I am aware of the label and also that Okular got the first certification in Germany.

However I believe that the certification in its current form has limited value. But we thrive to integrate it into our toolchain.

Have you been part of the team that went through the certification process? I would love to get in touch and ask some questions :)

ognarb
I'm not part of the team did the certification process (just know some of them as I'm involved with plasma mobile and contribute occasionally to Okular), if you want to get in touch with them better ask them in the mailing list or matrix channel linked in https://eco.kde.org/ ;)
vira28
Sure, would love to collaborate on the Spinup project. It's in its early stage, so a lot of opportunities to have a huge impact.

https://github.com/spinup-host/spinup. Any open source RDS alternative.

We do have a bi-weekly standup and a small group of 5 members. Most of us just want to learn Go, Docker and Databases. Feel free to ask any questions. Thanks.

Rodeoclash
I've been doing a bit of work in the esports space. Two projects, the first which allows freelance coaches to leave reviews on footage that's been given to them. You can see an example of a coach using it here:

https://kilk-valorant.vodon.gg/

The other is a tool that I've built in conjunction with a coach from a French esports team which allows the coach to add footage of the individuals players in a match, synchronise the videos, then view the match while jumping around each of the individual viewpoints instantly. This is an open source tool here:

https://github.com/Rodeoclash/vodon-pro

(I have some ideas around hosted services to support the review process which could be subscription based).

At heart I'm a developer, so I'd really like to connect with someone who is both in the esports space and business focused. Contact details in my HN profile.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
openfuture
Next month I will post my own stuff in this thread but for this month I want to highlight the much more active efforts of the whereiseveryone crowd. Please join us in making guix great! https://git.sr.ht/~whereiseveryone/guixrus#manifesto

We have meetups also every month to discuss documentation and packaging. Next month I will also start a meetup for datalisp (which you could see as configuration meetup, i.e. how to run your own system).

gyulai
I'm looking to collaborate with a game developer. I have an idea for a special kind of EdTech game for a niche audience and would like to build a business out of bringing such games to market.

I'm a software engineer in the data science and web backend space myself, but would like to be involved in this more from a business angle. I would take care of marketing and would front a marketing budget.

The developer would get no cash compensation, but a majority share in the profits generated. The total amount of time investment required would probably measure in the 100s (rather than 1000s) of person-hours and the timescale is very flexible.

Please email gyulai dot a22 at zedernkind dot com.

i_dont_know_
Visualizing political data :)

I've done various 'pet projects' over the years in this realm, from exploring political bias in word embeddings to simple voting maps showing regional shifts, to comparisons of actual crime vs fear of crime across various demographics. I've even gotten to partner up with actual journalism outlets.

I love doing this stuff but I'd like to collaborate with others (either with technical or promotional capacity) to make these kinds of tools more useful, relevant, and ultimately actually inform people better.

johtso
Are you aware of the open knowledge foundation? If I remember they're involved in this kind of stuff.
i_dont_know_
Ah, cool! No, I wasn't aware of them... thanks for the pointer!
skywal_l
Would love to have an open-database on political representatives. Some all-in-one source of info: - Where do they get their funding? - Their assets - Their political stances: voting records, statements to the press (multimedia: video, audio, press excerpts) - Their relationships: who their wife or children are working for? Who are they friend with (seems intrusive but it has a lot of influence on how they vote)

The UI would be important, something easily accessible, searchable, dynamic.

This is hard work and with no hope of monetizing it so I guess its a lost cause but that would allow to have better insights when casting your own vote.

i_dont_know_
I think this is more relevant in the US... in party-based systems it becomes much more interesting to see what the party trends are... it's kind of the same types of information but it's even harder to get at because it's spread out over a party. But it's also a little easier to see because parties have to coordinate internally and artifacts of that coordination are pretty easily available through public channels. But yeah, no hope of monetizing so a hobby it will stay.
jcun4128
If anyone is in the XR space (Sway/Wlroots/Monado) I'm slowly working on getting into that.

Full disclosure I am a supporter/consumer of SimulaVR and I'm trying to learn their codebase however I'm coming from a different place/easier stuff eg. React/Node/Python/C++. So transitioning to Haskell/Godot/the above has been difficult. I'm kinda looking for someone interested in this space who can easily look through that code/read it and know how it works.

What I'm looking for is kind of a mentor that can glance through the codebase/figure out the "abstraction" of how the code works and then I can work off of that as I continue to learn the stack. Also the Nix ecosystem is new to me, trying to learn that as well, I use a Valve Index, working on changing stuff/rebuilding/trying it out in real time.

I'm in their discord but I'm trying to learn this on the side so I can be part of the XR space in the future. For personal or professional means, one day I will have one of those Simula One devices so I want to be able to work on the software it uses.

As far as quid pro quo what I work on in day job is random stuff in web space. I'm a CRUD/code-gluer type developer. I develop/work on an eSign/video platform for example. I just have not done much work on lower level/more native stuff like this. So I can offer help in that space, setup servers, build some API, bridge APIs together, reverse engineer some API, I can use cross platform tech like Electron to make "native" apps too. Draw an interface and I can build it in html/css/js as I was a front-ender for a while.

I realize this is probably not what collaboration means, my bad about that. I want to "collaborate" on this space but I'm a noob is what I'm saying.

Will note this is not an immediate thing, I am aware it's going to take me a while to learn this and I have some other things to take care of before I completely dive into this on my spare time.

tejado
I’m happy to collaborate on Authorizer - a hardware password manager based on old Android phones.

Next milestone: smartcard integration over USB.

I would like to build a lib to abstract USB Gadgets on Linux. This is necessary for adding smartcard support (e.g., to store your GPG keys in Authorizer). I already did a lot of research about it, but more on an amateur level as I’m not a kernel dev.

One further milestone on Authorizer is finding a next device (cheap, not too old Android, smaller, …) to base the development on.

Project: https://github.com/tejado/Authorizer

obviyus
Greetings, I’m working on my first “real” Rust project which is an IRC bot for the #f1 channel on Libera. All it does is post the results of a race into the channel. You can find the code at: https://github.com/obviyus/hamverbot

It’s my first time building something async in Rust and using Tokio so I’d love to have some experienced Crustacean eyeballs on it. Please feel free to drop suggestions, pull requests or general advice for working with Rust.

Cheers.