Ask YC: What are you working on these days?
What are you working on these days?
I just met my co-founder, and we are working out the concept for this product idea I've had for a while, to help with email overload. Lots of fun!
I just met my co-founder, and we are working out the concept for this product idea I've had for a while, to help with email overload. Lots of fun!
* Working on better pre-caching scripts/SQL for http://mediawombat.com search results
* Working on how to charge a company that wants to use the http://mediawombat.com API
* Coming up with ideas for a back-end for a new auction-based concept that my friend and co-founder has come up with
* Coming up with ideas for mixing/matching data when Google releases their RSS feeds for google searches
* Trying to master CSS and transparency to make pretty boxes and stuff. I'm not very artistic. :)
* Writing a play-by-email and play-by-web strategy game
* Coming up with a way to keep a linux configuration on my laptop so when I do a fresh-install of Fedora 10 next month, I don't have to re-create all of my custom configurations from scratch (again)
* Thinking of cool ways to use the WiiMote
* Setting up my father's website (has an idea about improving K-12 education)
* Keeping my older kid from injuring my younger kid
* Keeping the wife happy
* oh, and my actual paying day job :)
Maybe you meant something substantially more complicated but....
...just mount /home/ on a second partition, that way you can wipe and/or upgrade linux and keep all your personal settings.
At the moment we are considering Celeste as the basis for this platform. http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/celeste/
I've got the partner (alexkravets), now we're looking for funding to mitigate the risk of having no day job.
We don't have a write-up online at the moment, but we firmly believe in the "ideas are cheap; execution is everything" philosophy, so we'll answer any questions.
First we'll build the equivalent of an online mountable disk so it'll be a natural fit for online storage/backup and sharing.
Building applications on top of this storage layer such as photo sharing and syncing will be next.
As for how to compete, the magic sauce is openness on two fronts. Bandwidth and storage are commodities, and we want this storage tier to be a commodity marketplace as well. The storage providers will compete for end users while cooperating to store and serve up data. A user can switch providers and retain the same data in the system (cloud).
Along with an "open" system, most (if not all) of the software will be open source. We envision a small hub of centralized services (identity and such), a storage provider ring, and the end users.
So basically we'll beat the big guys by creating an open system with open software. Our company, then, will be taking a small slice of a big pie, rather than on these players head-on.
Very nice way of thinking about it. Good luck.
* Speaking about, and generally pushing for more interest in Open Data
* Putting my entire life in a semantic graph: http://blog.kiwitobes.com/?p=73
* Trying to figure out what programmers can do about risk management failures
woohoo !
(loved your first)
from his talk at OSCON:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=210132
Thanks Toby. Awesome book.
- Just about finished a small 2 week project that will allow indie game developers a place to host their games, upload media, and give status updates. Been done before (Infact, I made one of first incarnations the style of service about 6 years ago) but I need something to do with my www.gamecake.net domain and this was a fun way to learn more about django and give a little back to the community I no longer belong to due to time restraints.
- Starting up a video cooking blog. My side passion is cooking and I would like to create videos of my recipes. I'm celiac/dairy-free so I have a niche to focus on. I've got a good camera now, and will probably shoot my first real episode this week now that I have some recipes nailed down strong.
Not looking to make money on either of these, just for fun and learning. Plus they look good on a resume in my opinion.
I aggregate all the gigs sites I can find e.g., craigslist (all of them), sitepoint, elance, etc, and then use Bayesian filtering to bring the most relevant gigs for you to the top.
I've been working on it nights and weekends. Great respite from some of the less than pleasant activities of coding at my day job.
i'll be keeping tabs on you guys. :-)
And a site where you create your audio autobiography by uploading mp3s. Hello, RIAA.
What do you use to fetch your library of artists/etc? Or is it selt built?
I find links between artists and recommend based upon that. These links include: being recommended by a human, being on the same record label, being mutual admirers, playing gigs together, being posted to the same mp3 blog, being on the same mixtapes and so on.
I wrote a post on my blog that gives a comprehensive account of how the recommendation system works: http://www.maryrosecook.com/post/show/130
And, yes, I know the UI is horrible.
You should remove that my any means necessary.
I think the UI is pretty nice, actually. Very functional, feels like a "tool". Don't lose that when you make it more fancy.
However, I am desperately in need of someone who can work with me to make things both more functional and more attractive.
Thanks very much for the feedback.
nevertheless, i love your vibe.
I'm trying to skew the site towards unusualness and away from genres. Thus, the ways I link artists can produce some weirdness like the above. However, users can give feedback to help reduce the insanity quotient.
Thanks very much for the feedback.
Any other ideas, besides taking out the obvious ad on google? I really don't want to screw with trying to get high keyword ranking via the SEO black-magic route.
Mostly working on Stitcho.com (http://stitcho.com)
Stitcho is a desktop notification widget for your website, with support for Windows and Mac. Add desktop alerts to your web app in less than 30 minutes.
Also, trying to build an Erlang community in the DC area (search for Erlang on meetup.com)
Finally, putting together a presentation for BarCampDC this Saturday.
Rather, Stitcho lets you send notifications from server side code that are delivered to your users via the Stitcho widget. The Stitcho server sits in the middle to route and deliver the notifications.
Also, Stitcho provides widgets for Mac and Windows. (The Mac version can use Growl if it's available.)
Does that answer your question? If not, please clarify.
Q: Isn't this just a shortcut for (http://www.google.com/search?q=hacker+news)?
A: Absolutely, but the shortcut makes it viable to create on-the-fly links to search results (or use str8.to's I'm Feeling Lucky option) in IM conversations, or on twitter, or in emails (I recently told a client to http://look.fo/how-to-use-ftp) without having to go look up a good answer.
Stuff like that. Anyways :).
DARPA has all of the amazing stuff coming out of it...
1. Attend a top liberal-arts college (CS, Amherst)
2. Get master's degree from top research university (HCI, Carnegie Mellon)
3. Work for General Dynamics
4. Stick around long enough to get promoted, kick butt, etc.
5. Profit!!!
BTW, he said that chances are, whatever the next big thing is will come out of DARPA. His bet was on pervasive computing - DARPA's apparently doing a lot with computers in clothes, computers in canteens, computers in backpacks, computers in visors, basically computers everywhere. The logic being that most of their troops are getting deployed to inhospitable environments (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) and if they can monitor environmental conditions for things like excessive heat, sandstorms, laser sniper sights, explosive residues, they can save lots of soldiers' lives. And of course, if it trickles down to consumer uses it could completely change how people use computers.
1) A lot of large research companies get DARPA research grants. General Dynamics (like nostrademons said), HRL, Boeing, etc. etc. You can get a job with them, and if the environment doesn't feel soul-crushing to you, you are golden.
2) A lot of CS research at Universities is funded by DARPA. If you are still in school, or if you are out but still have close relationships with your professors, you can always find out what kind of projects they have. DARPA projects are especially nice because they are large in scope and there's always a need for extra people. Don't expect to be paid much though.
I chose route 2 - after my startup failed I wanted to do something that paid, was not as intense, and had nothing to do with Web 2.0 and Social Networking and all that, so I just e-mailed a professor.
In my experience, that makes it difficult to get anything too interesting done as people (due to budgetary constraints, particularly at the industrial research labs) focusing on getting the minimum deliverables done, instead of trying new things. The downside here is pretty obvious: if a DARPA program manager could specify 3 years in advance what should be achieved, then it isn't really research, more like engineering.
I guess that's why most savvy researchers only write DARPA/NSF proposals for things they've already done (but not published on); gives them money to work on the _next_ big thing :-)
Now, I am working on trakify.com. It is not up yet. Need a partner desperately.. LOL...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=312260
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=283813 <- answering why he is a programmer
:-)
New bank, no risky holdings. Everybody else is in trouble and refusing to lend. It's a great idea.
* Working on a new version of my chess engine. I've had various versions over the years with the strongest playing around ELO 2300 (master level)
* Working on a chess engine that uses non-traditional searching/AI techniques. I'd be absolutely thrilled to get this thing playing as well as a child.
* Teaching Intro to Computer Science at the local university - a tremendous experience.
* Learning Doc Watson's version of Deep River Blues on my guitar
www.investingwithoptions.com
Disclaimer: didn't [listen] to your videos cause the I/O board on my MBP is fried and audio output doesn't work.
My main brokerage is thinkorswim and that's the platform I do screencasts from.
Hopefully (crossing fingers) when I get some good traffic going I can get some advertising contracts with some financial service companies.
My webapp does all of this, and I've spent a lot of my free time lately making the code cleaner and easier to read. After the next MAGFest in early January I'm planning on releasing this webapp as an open source project on Sourceforge or somewhere similar.
I think a lot of other conventions might find this useful if they can find a programmer or sysadmin to make the small changes necessary to adapt the code for their purposes. I'm excited that some of our staffers are already planning on recommending this system to some of the other conventions they staff.
* Creating a foreign key based ORM for PHP5 * Creating a PHP5 database abstraction layer that's easier to use than PDO or the alternatives * An abstraction layer for html forms that generates, validates and even supports deeply nested "arrays of fields" * A console terminal multiplexer (GNU screen, but split-screen) in C for Linux
Disclaimer: There are existing projects similar to many of the above, but I'm striving to make my APIs cleaner, code readable and more concise. Plus I enjoy learning by doing.
I'm also extremely interested in wireless mesh ... anyone working on that?
To cut down on my total workload (and so my mother wouldn't complain when I worked on these projects), I'm using both for two different projects for the IB diploma program. As a result, I have to do the Mao-playing system in Java though.
And also looking for a permanent gig, because I just got laid off. :]
I have considered this idea a few times over the past couple of years as I work for an organisation that gives me a great deal of exposure to people in debt and the methodology typically used to assist them to address those debts.
In the past I have ignored the idea as I considered it technically uninteresting but I have now found myself in the position where I am (a) wanting to jump into the startup game, (b) have relevant industry experience, and (c) it's the right time (credit crunch).
So right now I'm finishing up version 1 this week and deciding whether to 1) start marketing version 1, 2) start on version 2 and then market, 3) wait for large corp to come around so I can continue usability testing and making the product better (it's clunky now), 4) Look for a partner and do any of 1-3
I'm not sure which way to go, to be honest. Anybody got any ideas?
'Bout to lease some space at a pretty rad SoMa office loft, to be joined by Eddie of Picwing - what's his HN name?
Realizing it's way more fun when the odds are stacked against you.
Agreed...way more fun when the odds are stacked against you. See you in the office!
A little python script to generate a LaTeX beamer presentation with some default theming/styling/etc. added. I tend to forget the LaTeX syntax because I don't use it very often. However, I really like doing LaTeX beamer presentations so I wrote a little script which basically provides me with something to start with.
It is a "project" though and not a "startup" or "company". :)
* a web-site-as-service for customizing installation / install cds for different flavors of Ubuntu.
* a customizable tetris-like game editor done in javascript, allowing people to create their own shapes / rules / etc.
* slowly making an emacs-like editor in python
* working on a web based store for the various media produced by the house I live in
(a) Working through Cormen et al's Algorithms book. (b) Trying to learn how 3D game engines work by building one (in java). Rendering is completely in software. (c) Working through Rudin's "Principles of Mathematical Analysis"
* sports data modeling
* desktop notification app
Also working on some top secret engine yard projects that I will be able to talk about soon.
Doing other random hardware as well
linkedin.com (groups - I'm just as surprised as you)
other blogging sites with location services might be helpful as well.
A better methods for managing mailing lists.