HMO: Help Me Out | Hacker News Reader

HMO: Help Me Out

163 points_hoa8183 comments

I just read this [1] post, and I think we can do it at a big scale here at HN.

So, if you need any help with a project, a startup, or an idea, just post it here. Mention any details that might be required, and make sure to add contact details!

Let's see how we can get some good rolling here.

[1] http://tomcritchlow.com/post/82380207991/let-me-know-how-i-can-help

View on HN

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 while renewing my technical skills.

- designing hardware. I've designed an built a few boards, know some Verilog, etc., but looking to increase my EE knowledge and design capability.

- building EDA tools, think learning "compilers for hardware".

- formal proof systems, HoTT, Coq, etc.

- learning some probability theory (something I never had to learn properly) with an eye, perhaps, towards finance.

How I can help:

- Math. I know some. My research is in topology, I'm not sure that would be of practical use to anyone (unless you're trying to learn topology).

- deep background in compilers, computer architecture, programming languages (co-founder of compiler/tools startup, bunch of patents, Fortune 500 acquisition)

- lots of tech startup experience, but I'm not sure I have anything special to add beyond what the larger HN community can offer.

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.

A random thought on this - would topology encompass, say, better ways to unwrap 3D models / project textures onto said models? If so, various 3D / gamedev people might be interested in talking to you...

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.

Sent you an email!

HMO:

I'm a web developer from Mapbox / former White House tech advisor running for Congress. I released my campaign issues on GitHub: http://www.wired.com/2014/03/cole-platform/

I need help raising money to compete. Small donations welcome. http://coleforcongress.com/contribute

How I can help:

Happy to share my experience / advice with those interested in working in politics or government.

Once elected, I'll be a Representative in Congress who has worked in and understands tech. Here's where I stand on the issues: http://coleforcongress.com/issues/technology/ and a reddit AMA: www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/20wvx5/im_dave_cole_candidate_for_congress_nj2_a_coder/

dave [at] coleforcongress [dot] com

I grew up in your district and still have some friends+family there, some of whom are politically active. I'd happily put forward a good word for you if you had a sensible foreign policy statement on your Isseus page. But as far as I can tell, foreign policy seems to be left out? I understand you are taking pull requests, but I figure something that important should be written by you, at least for a first draft :)

OK i looked at your HN post, your splash page, and your home page, and I still don't know WHERE you're running for congress. Perhaps you could lay out the basic vitals and your qualifications or platform here?

New Jersey! The second district. It's most of South Jersey, from the Philly outer suburbs to Atlantic City, Long Beach Island, and Cape May -- and everything in between.

Here's my bio, albeit in campaign-speak: http://coleforcongress.com/about/

The basics:

- Worked on '08 Obama campaign as a data analyst and field organizer

- I moved WhiteHouse.gov to an open source CMS and released code back to the public

- Worked with other govt agencies to do the same

- Helped design and set up the first versions of the We the People petition platform

- Worked on the "the good part" of healthcare.gov

- Early member at Mapbox, helped develop platform and work with clients

- Running as a Democrat supporting infrastructure investments for improving schools and wiring rural and non-competitive areas for high-speed (fiber) internet access

- Strongly support network neutrality, protecting free and open internet, taking on patent trolls, ending NSA domestic surveillance and supporting outside expert oversight, to name a few

Even though this is NJ, it's the US Congress -- votes affect us all.

Thanks -- understood that the platform is national.

Is there any convincing you that second amendment rights should be treated in parity with first, fourth and fifth amendment rights?

If not, I wouldn't be able to vote for you, but I wish you luck regardless.

Not just on the logo, but on the Home Page: He’s running for Congress as a Democrat in New Jersey’s 2nd Congressional District.

It's on his site, albeit a little hard to see. South Jersey seems to be the place.

Good context here: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/hackin...

IMHO: this is worthy of our attention.

email in profile.

HMO:

I'm launching a static site generator that comes with a fully-featured CMS so that your non-tech friends can edit the site. It allows frontend engineers to build a custom CMS through a form-builder and then scaffolds templates out of them.

I'd love to have some general feedback on the concept and what would keep you from using it. I'm worried that we're targeting too small a segment (frontend engineers that don't want to touch backend code).

http://www.webhook.com has a video demo, and there are more in the blog.

How I can help:

I've launched a few businesses before, including a few with decent sized exits. I can give you some honest feedback on your product as well as your design. I also do open source design work, recently redoing the theme for readthedocs. If there's something small you need design help on, feel free to contact me. Usually I only have a couple hours a week to hack on open-source, but always looking for engineery projects to spruce up.

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 professional-looking site for a friend, and they're comfortable with HTML and CSS, but they don't understand how Wordpress works.

I did find a few things that I think needs some work though.

You're presenting a commandline interface. I love commandline. I much prefer a sensible CLI to even the best graphical interfaces. But your target market? I'm not sure they'll like that nearly as much. If they were comfortable with CLI, they'd be probably be comfortable enough to find their way around a server. Is there any way you can manage testing & deployment without the CLI?

On your site, you advertise the virtues of a static site as being fast. But, in the video, images are loading slowly on your demo page. It really stood out to me. You might consider having the page's images already in your browser cache when you load the demo page.

And the video -- the video is really a bit rough. You're clicking around way too fast in the video. I had trouble keeping up with what you were doing. The page template you're using in the video isn't sexy at all, so that makes it less attractive to designers. Having some kind of default page template along the lines of what you'd find for Wordpress would probably be good.

The video was also too specific. You went into some detail on embedding podcasts or Soundcloud stuff, but didn't really explain any of the rest of the interface. In your intro video, I don't necessarily need to know step-by-step how to embed a podcast, I maybe only need to know that it's possible. At the end of the video, I still felt like I had no idea what Webhook could do, which sucks because although I'm not your target market, I probably know 6 people who are. Along the same lines, there were a number of typos and miscapitalized things in the video, and some of the dialog was a bit hokey (like when you remembered that you actually had to go into chat to invite a participant). This adds to the "rushed" feeling in the video.

And the thing is, it looks like you've got a really polished product! Then you have the video, which makes it feel a lot less professional.

Also, it seems like you could tap a secondary market, by hosting a template shop on your site and taking a cut from sales of the templates. Just because someone's comfortable with HTML & CSS doesn't necessarily mean that they want to start from scratch. With the explosion in popularity of things like Bootstrap, I think there's pretty good evidence that people are avoiding that as much as possible.

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 easy. Themes are just git repos that are downloaded and installed through the browser and unpacked via a websocket. I think you're right though that we need a few solid, well-designed themes there in the beginning though. It'll likely be my primary concern over the next month now that the product is finishing up. Although opening a store might be a good way to go, I'm thinking we'll likely just try and partner with one of the many buy-a-theme sites out there and simply let them continue serving that niche.

Part of the fun of startups though. Trying to octopus your way through a launch, building every little bit.

Again, thanks for the comment.

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!

fully agree on market size and that the target customer would prefer GUI over CLI

We've actually been wanting something like this for a project we're working on to build a new CMS for part of EFF's website. Initially we were thinking of modifying prose.io to make it more flexible, but this goes even farther.

Unfortunately we're probably too far into dev at this point to switch (we went with a rails app), but this problem comes up pretty regularly for us and I'm looking forward to giving Webhook a try.

Here's a suggestion on the video: instead of having one long recording, create multiple, much shorter ones that explain pieces of functionality.

Always respected EFF's work. If there's anyway I can help you feel free to reach out.

Other users can't see the "email" field in your profile. Only admins can see it. If you want us to see your email, you'll have to put it in the "about" field.

This looks really close to something that I've been thinking of building. I think the market would be web developers who want to have a custom content site but don't want to wrangle with all of wordpress, because it's slow and there's too much boilerplate to write. A templating system that's easy to use, but also extensible when you need it.

I signed up for the beta, I look forward to testing it.

Just signed up for the invite. FYI you convinced me to sign up 3:30 minutes into the vide demo.

Please send me an invite!

sam@email.ly

Alright then let's see how this goes :)

Email: dan [at] danhough.com

## Help me out

1. I want to open up a co-working space in London, or possibly elsewhere in the UK. Idea is pretty fully-formed but I'm missing a few pieces to the puzzle. Anybody experienced in this?

2. I'm releasing my first non-free iPhone app pretty soon, marketing advice would be super useful. It's meant for London Pub Crawls.

## Let me know if I can help

1. JavaScript & iOS dev advice for newbies

2. Help with honing ideas esp. when it comes to maps & collaboration

3. I can play the guitar & sing pretty well [0]

Currently in Chamonix, back in London in May.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmDXpLbi2w0

> I want to open up a co-working space in London, or possibly elsewhere in the UK. Idea is pretty fully-formed but I'm missing a few pieces to the puzzle. Anybody experienced in this?

I helped (very slightly) get a co-working and business hub going in my area: http://sierracommons.org/. It's going to be celebrating its 5th anniversary in a few months, and I can possibly put you in touch with the guy who's done all of the real work in keeping it running, if your scope matches his.

It might help him out if your conversation with him gives him some ideas on presenting talks on starting co-working spaces, since that's the sort of thing he's into these days.

Send me an email (address is in profile) if you'd like to get in touch with him.

Slightly off-topic, but I've just written 10 mins of JS soundtracked by your busking. Cheers! :o)

More on-topic, have you contacted http://theskiff.org/ to see if they can help you fill any gaps?

Haha awesome! 10 minutes, I'm glad you lasted that long :) I hope it's the best JS you've ever written :P

I haven't contacted them, no. I've been meaning to go to Brighton though as I hear the tech scene down there is actually very interesting indeed. Thanks for the link, I'll get in touch!

Actually, I listened well past 10mins, but then the Oasis cover triggered a previous-life flashback and I had to stop :o)

FWIW, I work out of a coworking space at http://wyche.in, out here in The Shire. Ping me an email (in profile) if you'd like me to intro you to the boss here, in case that's helpful.

The Shire, eh? I'm from one of those!

I'll be in touch :) Thank you very much for the offer!

EDIT: Apologies about the Oasis cover, I'm afraid it's just such a moneymaker. I can't resist.

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

> "I'm releasing my first non-free iPhone app pretty soon, marketing advice would be super useful."

This should answer a lot of questions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7592282/

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 preparing for interviews, what kinds of projects to work on in my free time, and what kinds of positions I should be looking for that will be willing to interview/hire someone who hasn't had a software engineering role despite being a bit older.

My older resume: http://jclo.co/john-resume.pdf Github and LinkedIn, as well as contact email are in profile.

Help You Out: I am pretty good at finding bugs, testing software, and writing. I can proof read documentation, resumes, cover letters, or any other text written in English, or close to English. I'm not judgmental about the idiosyncrasies non-native writers/speakers have, and I am happy to point out that they speak/write English better than I speak/write any other language, but I'm also happy to identify and correct those idiosyncrasies if you want.

From working at Quora, I have some good insights about how startups scale their infrastructure (I also helped to write a long polling back-end in Go for an "off road" project), and I can offer some minor insights.

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).

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 industries. I think this could be much bigger if I could somehow overcome those deficits.

Longer version of this post: http://basketball-gm.com/pitch

Email me if you're interested in what I'm doing: jdscheff@gmail.com

How hard would it be to reskin the game as soccer/rugby/American football/hockey/etc. management? Expand your potential customer pool.

That's a good question! It'd be easy to do a hacky port to another sport, but a quality port would be much harder. There is a lot of detail involved in the simulation engine, the AI, and the UI. To put in the time to make a good simulation game requires some significant motivation.

For me, the basketball version is fun to work on because I'm a huge basketball fan. Other sports wouldn't be nearly as fun for me. If I thought that making versions for other sports was the path to riches, I might be motivated enough to try it. But if the basketball version can't grow beyond its current popularity, then the other sports probably won't be hugely profitable either.

That being said, I am working with someone to make a baseball version, but it's too early to say if anything worthwhile will come from that effort.

"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".

Yes I did, thank you! Damn, that text has been there for months...

Contact info in Profile.

Help Me Out

If you happen to live in Ottawa or Toronto, I’m trying to downsize some of my possessions, by trading them for anything really (Canadian dollars, Bitcoin, Dogegoin or a chat over coffee). I’m updating my list – http://eswat.ca/dpac/ – of stuff I want to get rid of weekly.

Let Me Know How I Can Help

Have or know an open-source, web-related project that could use some UI help? I can take a look and see what I can contribute.

Hey, this is great. I'm doing the same thing. A lot of stuff: DVDs, books, musical instruments, gadgets and stuff. :)

Can I use your design on my site? I already copied it. :P

Yup, feel free! It’s actually using the Do What The Fuck You Want To License ;)

https://github.com/eswat/dpac

IMO a grid of smaller images with some mouseover popup or something with a large image and description would work far better than this.

How I can help: I'm a Haskell developer and I'm willing to develop moderately-sized applications for you in my spare time.

What I need: I would like some personal branding advice (coaching) from someone who is good at it. I've been reading online resources about the topic but it's not enough.

I'd be happy to help out, feel free to get in touch!

Email: hello at duncanmsmith.com

Skype: notduncansmith

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 whether or not the problems are real or discussing their own ideas for how they should be solved.

I need someone to step out of their head and into mine for a little while (couple of hours via Google Hangouts?). I'm totally down for discussing the existential aspects of the problems and any ideas people have as far as how to address them....but not until I've managed to get my vision organized into something that makes sense.

Video of that panel is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J45z8aMwl-U (apologies for the low quality...I'm a coder, not an editor, and this was a hack job just so that I could rebuild the results of my research, which I no longer have access to. Also, the video is only 75 mins long, but got doubled in the conversation process; it's black and silent for the second half)

Email me at crawford.comeaux@gmail.com if able/willing.

Here's the photo album of my notes, which I'm typing up right now: https://www.facebook.com/crawford.comeaux/media_set?set=a.10...

The beginnings of a mind map based on my notes: http://www.mindmeister.com/397541621

Background on the project:

I'm trying to start a hackerspace in Lafayette, LA with the goals of designing the space & defining the culture I want to cultivate in it so as to meet as many needs of the underserved creative community as possible. A few years ago, I researched innovation ecosystems, what they need to develop a startup culture, and what Lafayette does or doesn't have. A few weeks after wrapping up that research, an event took place with a panel discussion that identified needs/challenges facing the artistic community in town; they were exactly the same as the needs I'd identified for us to (hopefully) begin producing more than just a few startups a year.

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.

I'm really hoping to be done by then. Trying to knock this out ASAP. Good to re-meet you :)

I have pretty bad ADD, but I guess I'm lucky that my medication helps a lot.

I'll try to set aside some time to watch this video and take some notes. It may take a while but I'll ping you if I manage not to get distracted in the process :)

I tend to have much greater success in accomplishing tasks if there's a collaborative way to do them with someone else.

I'm currently tethering my laptop to my phone, so this may not work, but I'll try setting up a Google Hangout On Air with the YouTube plugin for simultaneous viewing in a few mins.

In the spirit of this thread, here are some more public projects from HNers on DoerHub:

http://www.doerhub.com/for/bluetooth-sensor (arduino research)

http://www.doerhub.com/for/theodinproject (tech ed)

http://www.doerhub.com/for/lumihealth (health insurance)

http://www.doerhub.com/for/robopaint

http://www.doerhub.com/for/coincashcard (bitcoin)

http://www.doerhub.com/for/crowdfunding

http://www.doerhub.com/for/synaptor

http://www.doerhub.com/for/you3dit (3D printing)

http://www.doerhub.com/for/www-roomva-com (latam hotel app)

http://www.doerhub.com/for/stemfunder

http://www.doerhub.com/for/surgery-boards-app (surgery ed app - in beta)

http://www.doerhub.com/for/securityfirst (human rights)

http://www.doerhub.com/for/vizhack (visualisations)

http://www.doerhub.com/for/pilgrimr (beta testing)

It would be cool if this was a website (or maybe simply a subreddit?) instead of an HN thread which will disappear in a few hours...

As mentioned in the previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7572911 (direct link: http://www.doerhub.com )

What a nice idea! Inspired me to quickly create a very simple and basic tool. If there is sufficient interest, I will add additional features like categories, leaderboards, profiles, social login, ratings etc. If anyone wants to help me out, email me :)

http://www.helphero.co/

http://solvers.io

Email in profile.

HMO: I'm a Bay Area software engineer, but my resume doesn't get me interviews the way it should. Neither does my LinkedIn attract much attention. Since I am currently looking for a job, this is a bit of a problem. :-)

So, I'd like some help polishing my profile and resume, bettering my online presence, pointers to good recruiters, and also any high payoff networking tips.

What I have to offer:

* I studied math in graduate school, so I can help you with a variety of topics from calculus/linear algebra up to graph theory, abstract algebra, and category theory.

* I'm a decent writer, editor, and proofreader.

* I can give you feedback on your startup idea, web site, or iPhone app.

I'm building an invite-only jobs mailing list that is similar to the monthly "Who is hiring" on HN, except that it is available privately and accessible all the time (to members only).

I haven't advertised this anywhere except HN, because (as I have witnessed companies saying) they find top candidates on HN mostly. This is why I am specifically targeting HN users only.

So if you are a company hiring manager, looking for a job or just an individual that likes seeing job offers (you don't actively have to be searching), then you can Help Me Out by validating my idea here:

https://www.surveymoz.com/s/109791NPJFT

I will continue marketing my idea on HN only until there comes a point where growth through invites/referrals outstrips marketing here.

I know you guys love the "Who is hiring" as much as I do, so go on, signup :-)

Edit:

I forgot to mention...

Help You Out:

If you need somebody for general entrepreneurship advice, need a beta tester for a cool product, need an outside idea for growth marketing, need a Python programmer, need someone who understands finance or would just like to talk to someone about any ideas you have, then I am available and willing to assist.

"You can only gain as much as you are willing to give", so please do let me Help You Out.

Myself and a friend are working on a code visualization tool in the spirit of the original Code Bubbles (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1181742)

It's called Code Connect (http://codeconnect.io) and you can see our prototype demo at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuQ8NJOypqs

We're currently working on Visual Studio, but I'd like feedback on other IDEs and editors you guys think would be extensible in a similar manner. Would this behavior even be possible to accomplish in Eclipse, IntelliJ, SublimeText, Atom.io, etc?

We're also looking for beta testers and people interested in giving us feedback on the idea. You can subscribe for updates on our beta's release at http://codeconnect.io or reach out to me directly via josh@codeconnect.io or on twitter at http://twitter.com/GetCodeConnect

This is really, really cool. I'd love to see this in SublimeText but I doubt that it would be able to work as well as it does with Visual Studio.

Contact info in profile

Help me out: Need to find educators (who happen to know how to code) - My co-founder and I run a 1-to-1 mentorship program turning people into software developers (heavy emphasis on JS + frameworks) need help finding more instructors. We're looking for people passionate about education/love to teach who happen to know how to code.

How I can help: 1) Learn to Program Advice - Was a middle school teacher turned software engineer so I can help people get started on their programming track over a Google hangout consultation (won't sell you anything, just advice) 2) Business Idea Discussion - Love helping out any entrepreneurs talk about their business ideas/models, we bootstrapped ourselves, worked only part-time, and made revenue from day 1 3) High touch sales - All our sales are high touch sales $5-10k++ if you're trying to do high touch sales I can definitely share pointers/advice

Perhaps you should look for highschool educators that have taught basic programming in school.

Are you teaching remotely?

HMO: I'm designing and running a STEM curriculum for a local Boy Scout camp. We'll have more than 1000 11-17-year-olds come through to do merit badges and "Open STEM" which is basically relatively unstructured exploration of STEM related stuff (see: building catapults, model aircraft, what-if.xkcd.com style questions). We don't have a huge budget, but there's a small fund for needs.

I would appreciate:

- Advice on what to cover/the kinds of activities to put on

- Resources for cool cheap/free science-y things to give out/use

- Cool demos/graphics that explain difficult concepts (think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diffie-Hellman_Key_Exchan...)

- What you wish you had seen as a kid in STEM education

- General advice on teaching science/math/technology to people without much background in the middle of the woods

Thanks!

jp [dot] smith [at] wq23 [dot] org

Jeremy Kun's basic graph theory lecture [1].

[1] http://jeremykun.com/2011/06/26/teaching-mathematics-graph-t...

This should become at category up there next to "jobs" "submit" etc

I think that the WhoIsHiring account should just automatically post this. It's basically for everything that doesn't fit in the monthly Who's Hiring of Freelancer threads. Btw, this thread is fascinating. It's a great way to check the pulse of the HN crowd and a more informal way for people to "Show HN:".

I agree that the thread is fascinating. Your suggestion is a good one, since whoishiring already does this and is the only account allowed to.

Not on the first of the month, though—too crowded. Perhaps the second Friday of each month, since that's what today is. :)

I'm a junior developer at a networking company (currently going to university, but I will be done in about 10 years).

I want to improve myself. I am working on the Linux kernel but I have no idea how to get better at it, nor at networking. If anyone can point me to some (advanced?) topic related to networking or Linux, that would really help me.

I have done my own small version of tcpdump but I still behind behind other developer.

If anyone have any good resources about these subjects, I would really appreciate:

- How to write English (non-native language)

- Program well in c in userspare (Currently reading 'The Linux Programming Interface')

- (Advanced?) topic about networking (everything from Cisco routers to network security)

- Linux kernel networking programming

- Embedded development (I don't even know where to start that one...)

Also, as a second request, can anyone point how to simulate a network (simulate a small internet) using visualization (qemu and the like)?

> How to write English (non-native language)

I suggest writing a blog in English. Practice is probably the best way to learn. There is also http://english.stackexchange.com if you have specific questions.

> Program well in c in userspare (Currently reading 'The Linux Programming Interface')

In my experience, reading other people's code is the best way to get better at a language. I don't have much experience with C but I guess there are a few projects that would be interesting to read here: https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=language%3A%22c%22&ref=si...

Relevant links: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/925754/resources-for-lear..., http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Code-Leading-Programmers-Pra...

> Embedded development (I don't even know where to start that one...)

I am currently learning embedded development (maybe we could help each other?).

> I am currently learning embedded development (maybe we could help each other?).

I would love to!

And thanks for the links, I will try/read them.

> (Advanced?) topic about networking (everything from Cisco routers to network security)

Did you consider getting a Cisco certificate as a way to upskill yourself in the networking area? CCNA will give you a solid base, and Jeremy Cioara from cbtnuggets [1] has awesome video presentations about the subject.

>Also, as a second request, can anyone point how to simulate a network (simulate a small internet) using visualization (qemu and the like)?

Take a look at gns3 [2]

[1] - http://www.cbtnuggets.com/it-training-videos/course/cisco-64...

[2] - http://www.gns3.net/

I've been working on a website for almost 2 years (on&off). I'm right there at the final push to get it live, but I think I'm just a little burnt out from it. One of the things I'm struggling with is the pricing model I want to use. I'm trying to find that balance of a simple pricing scheme that scales well. My site was made to run leagues & tourneys, and I'm a single founder. If anyone would like to talk with me on my business model ideas, my email is in my profile or just leave a way to contact you here and I will!

:edit: I wanted to add that I believe I want a dynamic pricing scheme like Heroku's where they have a slider for how many dynos you want. The problem I run into is that I have a couple metrics that I can charge for, I just don't know how to meld them together.

I don't know your specific metrics, but one way to consider it is to forget about money for a minute. If you were to use one of those metrics to judge how successful your users were, which would it be?

Intercom.io is a brilliant example of this. They could have priced a million different ways, but they chose to charge by active users on their customer's apps. Now I don't even care about the price, I'll be happy to be doing so well each time I go up one of their price bands!

"We think getting your whole team on Intercom is a good thing. And we think talking to your customers is a good thing too. So we won’t tax you for either. We charge you more as your user base grows. Our interests are aligned."

I am working on an electronic product (a kind of smart card) but have very little expertise with electronics.

So far, I've been trying to outsource the electronic design as much as possible in order to focus on the firmware. Even then, I am starting to reach a limit.

I'd like to get in touch with someone who would know how to program something useful on a random micro-controller given the micro-controller's data sheet and a circuit diagram. Or someone who understands weird terms like "ISO/IEC 14443" or "JTAG".

How I can help: I have years of experience as a full stack web developer and have a very good grasp of Javascript, Node.js and web standards. I can also remunerate if you feel I'm taking too much of your time.

Help me out!

I may be able to help.

Worked full time as an EE for a few years, and now have a small niche electronics business on the side. I can't say that I have the time to take on a design project right now (depends on specifics) but I should be at least able to help you vet the skills of people you find or help you over any sticking points if you want to DIY.

I also recently learned what node is and think it's pretty cool. Contact info in profile.

If you're looking for patent advice, I would talk to a patent lawyer. If you can work with someone in New York, I can recommend someone.

Hey, I just modified my comment because the patent part is probably not that important (it would just help me sleep better at night knowing that no one will file a patent while I'm developing the product and sue me when I'm ready to ship). I cannot physically go to New York but if that lawyer can work with me by email/phone, I'd love to hear the recommendation.

You could do a defensive publication. Any publication which discloses the invention prior to the priority date invalidates a patent. This works in the USA too now they have got on the "first to file" band-wagon. The priority date is the date when the relevant disclosure was sent to the patent office; usually that's the application date, the date you sent it to the USPTO [or other office, WIPO, EPO, wherever] but it can sometimes be an earlier date.

So defensive publication is a provable publishing of material that discloses the invention in sufficient detail that the notional skilled worker in the relevant field could reproduce the invention. Once published a subsequent patent application for that invention would fail to be novel or inventive. That doesn't mean no one will apply, nor even that such an application wouldn't be granted, just that prior publication of the invention is an absolute defence.

Of course you'd want to be sure whether the invention is already patented before you try to exploit it commercially.

I'd like a partner for my startup hedge fund that uses machine learning and nlp. If you have experience with those check out dynofuz.com or @dynofuz. You can also email me with ricky at that domain.

Nice project, I remember seeing this before.

Small UX issue, on the input field for email addresses, the text isn't a placeholder (doesn't disappear when you start typing).

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

I worked with a dozen startups to put together the Startup Sticker Pack: http://startupstickerpack.com/

A dozen stickers from cool companies for $5. I'd love to hear from people about why they would / wouldn't want to buy one. It's not quite selling as well as I'd hoped.

I'd also like to hear from startups / groups who might be interested in buying one for each member of their team.

You can email me at mail+hmo@robert.io (+hmo is to track if any spam comes from posting it here).

Great idea :-)

A couple of observations:

I'm a non-USian, and while it looks like you ship worldwide for 5 USD, it's not crystal clear. Be good to make it so.

Also, I'm a Brit -- we're very polite ;-) -- so 5 USD including postage feels like I'm taking food off your table. I think most non-USians would be happy to pay an extra couple of bucks. Just a thought. Or maybe go down the middle and say, 5 USD + 1 USD shipping worldwide.

(Here's my thinking: Hmm. 5 USD. Seems cheap. What if it doesn't really include shipping. Hmm. Don't really want to get into that discussion. Move on.)

Also, while you have some great start-ups in their -- \o/ Buffer -- personally, I'd be in the market for cool tech. I see you have Firebase, which is awesome, but my current faves would include redis, jruby (new logo recently), and a few others.

It would increase your workload, but of you could let a customer pick, say, twelve from 20 or 30, mixed start-ups and tech, that would be great.

Okay, I'm rambling. Good luck with it.

Thanks for the feedback. I've clarified the text to show that it's free shipping worldwide. I like the idea of letting the customer pick from a list. I'm not entirely sure how much I'll pursue this beyond the first batch, but I'll keep that idea in mind if I do another round.

Thanks again for the suggestions!

Nice idea! I imagine that 90% of your sales (if not more) will come from wholesale. I think I saw you were reaching out to co-working spaces and so on but I'd ensure you're speaking with conference organizers, hackathon organizers etc etc.

The biggest problem there is that they will likely want their sponsors on the stickers rather than your set of startups...

Maybe you flip the model on it's head - get the startups who are on your stickers to finance the stickers and then offer the package for free to consumers. It's basically free marketing for these startups - maybe you share the customer's email address with the startup too in return? Feels like a small investment from each of the companies but you might get more orders that way?

just some thoughts

This looks really cool! I would definitely raise your pricing, if you want to stay in the single-digits then $8 (or even $7) would be great. I'd also look into formalizing your team sticker offer: 10% off for orders over 5x or something along those lines.

Edit: start hawking these at conferences. You'll make bank. Also, bookmarked to order in a few days when I get paid.

Thanks for the tips. I'm working on getting a better landing page together. I'll look into formalizing that bulk discount too.

This would be nifty schwag for tech talks and other events at co-working spaces and the like. I didn't know it existed.

I'll try getting in touch with some co-working spaces to see if their interested in some sort of bulk deal. Thanks for the idea.

HMO:

I just can't seem to solve this bug, no matter how hard I try... It's in my side project: http://www.hashworld.co/ it's written in Java under App Engine. If you want to give a try, send me an email at hmo@hashworld.co and I'll send you details.

How I can help:

I'd love to help out in interesting problems, especially relating to scaling and making sites always live.

HMO - Kickstarter advice. I'm helping my mad scientist inventor friend launch his Kickstarter. He has created an amazing water flight machine (think Flyboard-ish) and is launching the Kickstarter in 2 months and asked me to help with running the technical side of the campaign. Do you have: 1. Advice? Who to talk to, what to do, what to avoid? 2. Connections? Writers, bloggers, outdoor enthusiasts.

My game company, Silver Gryphon Games, has done two successful Kickstarters and runs a Kickstarter advice group on Facebook. Drop me a line (email in profile) if you want some pointers.

Tried to find your email bovermyver didn't see it. Mine is in my profile. Thanks so much!

I'd be happy to put some stuff in an email for you. For reference, I ran one of the largest early successes that unfortunately turned into an ongoing trainwreck. I'm actually still bullish on crowd-funding, but there are definitely some things worth sharing from the experience. Email is in my profile.

That sounds like it would make a great blog post (or 2). Would you consider posting about your experience somewhere?

Sorry for the delayed reply, I've been on the road. Unfortunately, as it is an ongoing situation, I'm waiting until every backer receives their items before talking publicly about the experience/lessons learned. Maybe I'll post it up on hn when the time comes, though.

Would love that email. Thanks. My email is in the profile.

You might want to contact some of the Maker related blogs who always like seeing inventive products like what you describe. Most of them are based in bay area. Tested.com might like something like this, you can find a contact email on their homepage.

Thanks snide. I will check them out.

Looking for feedback (ideally blog post reviews) of a product I own/maintain in my free time. It helps with product initiation, i.e. project start up questionnaires and proposals.

https://www.getosmosis.com

I'm willing to give out free accounts to people who write reviews, if it's the type of product you'd use.

Email support@getosmosis.com if interested.

HMO - Need a business contact at Wacom

If you know anyone at Wacom (the awesome tablet manufacturer), please help me get in touch with the said person. I've created a software that I'd like Wacom to bundle with their osx drivers. I think the software would help a lot of Wacom users.

Here's a screen-grab of the app : http://d.pr/i/4yG6

Thanks!

I'm a trained journalist and would be happy for anyone to bounce media-related ideas off me. Easy to find on the Web.

I am building a lightweight ebook reader (currently ~32kB compiled) that will be used to gather statistics on how people read books, magazines, etc.

The idea being, if we know how people read we can help people learn better. Obviously, there are other uses such as improving reading speeds, comprehension, and more. Further, we can potentially learn how structuring of sentences can effect peoples interest and learning as well.

Github: https://github.com/lettergram/basicbookreader

Email: austin at agw.io

Currently, I need help with cleaning up the project, and enabling Epubs, PDFs, and HTML files to be read.

Future goals: make it compatible with android and iOS, set up a central location of the data, improve statistics functions. The current version on github does not have any statistics, I'll update later with a fully working version of statistics.

No doubt the data geeks at Amazon love sifting though their Kindle analytics; nice to see an open initiative.

Perhaps some effort should be put into reverse-engineering Kindle data similar to how the Apple device databases were reverse engineered? http://www.crypticbit.com/zen/products/iphoneanalyzer

HMO: I've got a FOSS[0] that presents a simple, easy to use GUI for developers to help them create Vagrant/Puppet manifests for local development, and for deploying to hosts like DigitalOcean, Rackspace, AWS.

It's mostly me doing the development, and it seems to be fairly popular. However, I need help with several things!

I need a proper release process. Right now I'm just developing locally, pushing to git then pulling on prod. I want to implement Puppet tests to make sure everything jives.

I need a process to create random VMs using different configuration combinations, to make sure all my options are ok.

I also want to add support for more languages, as I currently have for PHP. Python, Ruby, Node are on my to-do but not really sure how to properly set those languages up!

Contact me on

Skype - jtreminio twitter - @juantreminio email - jtreminio@gmail.com

[0] https://puphpet.com

Interested in localizing your website?

I'm working on a localization library / SaaS called Localize.js (https://localizejs.com). It's a new way to localize websites that's much easier to implement than traditional localization techniques.

It works by automatically detecting and translating text on on the client-side, and allows you to order translations (machine or human) via the web interface.

The library is stable and is working well so far. It's currently used in production serving millions of pageviews on https://www.verbling.com/classes (to demo, select a language in the dropdown on the bottom left).

I'd love your feedback or thoughts on the approach. If you'd like a free account, shoot me an email! brandon@localizejs.com

I'm making a low-configuration webserver for Erlang. You can one-liner a server from the REPL.

I would love it if someone pitched in some help getting HTTPS working, or any other stuff they felt like.

https://github.com/StoneCypher/htstub/

== Help Me Out: Try out https://wsend.net

wsend.net is an easy way to send files from the command line. Trying to figure out how to get more people using it. Tell your friends about it / Tweet it out

== I Can Help:

* Someone to talk to

* node.js, Python, PHP, MySQL advice.

* A ride / drink / hangout in the NJ area.

a-at-abemassry.com

What's the main reason I would need to send files from the command line?

If this is for person-to-person sharing, the person on the receiving end has to know the url that I sent it to - how is that normally accomplished? Usually the way that I send files to people is the same way that I would communicate to them that I have sent files, e.g. HipChat, email.

HMO with marketing

I know very little about marketing both online and offline, i've had some ideas but really have no knowledge on whether its good or not. I'm kinda in an analysis paralysis state of not knowing if i'm going to piss away all my money because i dont know what will work.

Email in my HN profile.

Email sent.

Contact in profile.

How I Can Help: I'm a semi-technical internal medicine physician in fellowship specializing in cardiology at a large academic institution. I have experience on the clinical side, taking care of patients, work flows, etc. I have a masters in epidemiology and biostatistics, and am currently involved with clinical trials, some animal translational studies, and large database analysis. Would be happy to talk to anyone with an interest in health care.

HMO: I'm not good with the administrative and infrastructure aspects of medicine, including billing, HR, ICD/CPT coding, insurance, labs/PACS systems, etc. Would love to connect with people who have worked in these areas, either in a startup or established company!

HMO/HYO: I'm a PhD candidate in experimental physics looking to get some experience in real-world product development. I have lots of experience developing and fabricating one-off devices for our research, and I'd like to bring that background to bear on problems outside my field. I'd be happy to talk with anyone working on hardware problems. I'm probably not the guy to talk to about making a polished final product, but if you need a quick and dirty prototype or are hitting technical problems, I might be able to help.

Contact info is on my website: http://guavaduck.com. I'm in Seattle.

I created http://www.Learneroo.com to teach programming and more through interactive content and challenges. I'm looking for more developers to help with:

a) running code online b) creating interactive javascript "explainers" c) connecting students with tutors or jobs

I'm also interested in joining another startup doing one of these things, and just created a site for that purpose: http://startupmerge.com/.

Please contact me at ak[at]learneroo.com to find out more.

I'm also looking to help people learn programming, either Java or Ruby.

Do you use Codecademy? I think I may have spoken to you before. I do not recall, but there was someone who was teaching code online.

HMO:

I'm building a dating website for kinky folks. I'm hoping to have it ready for launch at the end of the year.

So pretty much, I need kinky folks! Specifically:

(1) I'd like to find a lawyer to be COO / President.

(2) I'd like to find kinky business owners: we have some freebies to give away during launch month, so if you want to provide your customers with some extra goodies let me know!

(3) The site will need some design. Right now we're scraping by with bootstrap and cider.

(4) If you're a kinky person yourself and you'd like to be kept in the loop when the site goes live please get in touch!

You can contact me via reddit. Check profile for details.

How I can help: I build and market websites.

I think you need to give your definition of the word "kinky" before posting that message ;)

I expect it'll mostly be appreciated by the BDSM community, but it's for people of all (legal) kinky interests.

I can help you get kinky wholesale products, dsugarman [at] hdtradeservices.com

HMO: Feedback from hardware startups.

I run a meetup and organized a conference to help folks who are working on or want to found a hw startup. Would love to connect over email with folks interested in the field and find out what their biggest frustrations are so I can develop my blog content and offer some more educational and fun events. First one is here: http://boot.lvhardware.com

Would also be interested in trading hardware work for coding/design skills or tutoring.

I can help: Hardware design verification, general advice on finding suppliers, kickstarter strategy, etc.

I built a small web service/couple of chrome extensions:

- http://tab.bz

It has around 15k chrome installs and about 650 registered users (you don't need to register to use the site, just to keep editing your links)

I need help with:

  - Design (it's terrible)

  - Logo (it hasn't got one)

  - Marketing (I've never done any)

  - Making more money (it makes just enough to cover hosting)

What should I do to take it to the next level? Should I even bother? It's designed to help people share similar content through one link, hassle free.

Email is in my profile

HMO: I'm a Linux/UNIX Engineer with some solid experience in enterprise grade technologies like clusters (PowerHA), virtualization (PowerVM, KVM, bit of VMWare), etc. I did a lot of work with IBM tech in general - AIX, Power systems, Tivoli... Wrote a bit of code, did some scripting and have good networking know-hows. Enterprise is getting boring, so I'm looking to get involved into some start up projects. I'd even consider volunteering if the project is interesting. Feel free to contact me via mail - nikola [at] krzalic [dot] com

I love this idea!

What would be helpful for me is the names of any smaller/independent live music or event venues in your area that you know of. Venues that would be best are those that are typically cash-at-the-door or that don't have a good ticketing system or website. I'm working on a simple ticketing system that lets venues like these list shows and sell fee-free tickets and I'm just looking for more beta testers. Send any you know of to contact@showboarder.com and use the subject line HMO

Thanks!

HMO: I just put up a MVP in a beta test. It's a workflow where you can build a data interactive with maps, charts and graphs to embed in your website/blog articles. I put up the workflow and then created a survey at the end to gather the tester's feedback. Would love some feedback.

http://thedata.directory/

HYO: would happily help anyone out with some beta testing/user feedback.

HMO:

I built http://findhn.firebaseapp.com in an attempt to help get more people collaborating on stuff on HN. Help me out by going to the website and adding interests to your HN profile. You'll have to add contact info to your HN profile in order for this to actually be useful though.

I would also appreciate general feedback on the site.

HYO:

I'd be happy to give feedback on projects. I can edit copy and be honest.

HMO: Know anyone interested in analyzing consumer EEG data? The product I'm working on is developing a solid dataset: http://www.threepound.com

How I can help: I'm a former startup data analyst and strategy consultant. I can give a few hours to help with making sense of the data you're collecting or think about how to start capturing 3rd party data.

I can give you a good EEG story, told to me by an engineering professor who was studying EEG data back in the 70s:

Some researchers set up an EEG hooked up to a computer that could display some analysis to the user (basically magnitudes of various waves). The idea was to see if biofeedback (people trying to control their EEG output in realtime) could lead to any benefits. All they got was positive feedback (no pun intended): people would tell them how it helped them focus, relax, think clearly, etc. Then at some point, one of the researchers realized a cable was unplugged and the values shown to people were just random noise...

Hi, I am building a messaging client that is designed to be cross compatible with all types of messaging (email, sms, xmpp) but more importantly sort / group the messages in an easy to use way. I could really use some feedback on the product and website: http://raven.enterthemist.com you can email me at my gmail address: ofer dot sadgat.

I signed up! Looking forward to trying it out.

== Help Me Out: With growth/marketing for ShelfLife.net, a social marketplace.

ShelfLife.net makes it easy for collectors of toys, action figures, video games, etc to buy, sell, and research collectibles, and track their collections. We've got a solid product built, and trying to figure out how to grow the userbase significantly.

nick-at-shelflife.net

== I Can Help:

* Startup/entrepreneur mentoring.

* Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB advice.

* Certified parkour instructor.

nick-at-deadorange.com

Awesome site. I'll be honest and say I was expecting something a little 1999 with the .net domain (full disclosure :-P).

Would you like to discuss things privately about your current traction?

Email is [redacted]. HMO:

Just launched [redacted], an automated gift shopping service.

1. Would like to ask someone questions about it. (Would you use it? What kinds of gifts would you like to see offered? How do you keep track of gift-giving? Is it a pain point for you?)

2. Would love beta testers and feedback.

Let me know how I can help. I'm happy to answer questions, beta test things, or give programming advice (esp. anything about web development).

This is a cool idea. This isn't really a pain point for me but I immediately thought of a couple of people in family (aunts) who are very active gift givers in a large family. I would imagine mother's with small children would be a target market for you (they tend to have to keep up with a lot birthdays). But that's just an assumption. With that said, I would suggest making the site for friendly for non-technical users. I think the "bot" terminology would lose them.

With that said, I'll bookmark your site and pass it along to people I think would be your users.

Maybe you're right about the "bot." I was imagining a cute, squeaky little robot, but hm...

Awesome, thanks very much!

HMO: Need help with Marketing for app that will be launching within two weeks.

Project: http://NewsCast.io

Project: News App that summarizes articles across the web. Status: The app is done. Website done. I really need help with putting it out there so people are aware of it and build a presence. I know we can grow this.

I can help with new ventures or partnership.

Hello !

How Can I Help

I have more than a decade of sales and distribution experience across diverse consumer industries. In between I worked as an intra-preneur also and launched business from scratch.

Since last 4 odd years, have been working on building my own company, but past 2 ventures have failed.

If you need any assistance in sales, distribution or marketing, please let me know. I would gladly help in whatever way I can.

Email - realmccoy2k2@yahoo.com

Cheers!

HMO:

I'm a Rails web developer and Clojure hacker. I'm looking for remote freelancing gigs and don't know how to find any clients. Any help there would be great!

How I Can Help:

In the same vein, I'm looking to build up a github portfolio by contributing to open source on Github. If you have a project in Ruby or Clojure that you want to get me up to speed with and want another hand, let me know.

Email in profile.

HMO:

I am nearing completion on an OSX productivity app aimed at helping busy project-oriented professionals (e.g. sales people, consultants, portfolio managers, attorneys) and college students deal with context switching by giving rapid access to diverse types of related information.

I'd greatly appreciate any of: beta testing, feedback, or advice on marketing.

HYO:

I'm a solid copy-writer and proof reader.

My email is in my profile.

I'm working on codeschool.org.uk - currently a coding summer school for 16-19 year olds. We'd love to pivot into something more like flatironschool.com or makersacademy.com - longer courses for adults, getting them to junior dev level - but don't know how to start recruiting candidates. Anyone have experience in this area? rob at codeschool.org.uk

Thanks!

Can't really help but noticed a couple of typos "recommendations, [sponsorship,] bursaries and sponsorship" (our two main weapons!) and "available until 15th May 2014, after which the sum[mer] will increase" (delete parenthesised text).

How you're fitting in all you mention on your personal /about page is beyond me. I've been considering running a code club at my eldest's school : will be interested to see your review (http://www.robpercival.co.uk/tag/code-club/).

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.

Help me out: I created a website, but I don't really know what to do with it, or if it's even worth doing anything with it.

https://www.recruiterator.com/

In short the site is like rate my professor for recruiters.

What I can offer.

Web Development, .Net, Java, Android or Windows Phone programming.

HMO - account recovery industry.

I'm building a service based on machine learning and operations to improve outbound recovery attempts. From customers experience it works very well.

I know there are people here who are or have been in the industry. Help me out by getting in touch so I can hone my messaging, product and expand my network.

email in profile.

Meta commenting about down votes is frowned upon on HN. You should probably remove your "NB" as it could be considered as complaining/baiting and turn into a self fulfilling prophecy. From the guidelines (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):

    Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
    Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you.

Regarding your comment, I don't think I can help but I'd be curious to know what are "outbound recovery attempts". Is it related to those "postmaster" emails you get when you try to send an email and it fails to deliver?

NB removed. I suspect I was being down-voted because of the industry.

Outbound recovery attempts refers to calling people up and asking them to pay their bills in the collections industry.

The first attempt will be a Dunning letter asking you to pay your bill. When you call in this is an inbound recovery. If they have to call out to you, it's outbound.

outbound recovery costs serious money. You need to pay for office space, equipment and an hourly wage to an employee. At the end of that you often see 8-40% recovery rates. My work pushes that number up significantly.

FWIW: There's a huge opportunity for people to bring A/B testing of dunning letters to the industry. It'll be a huge slog though.

Nice idea here.

- Help Me Out

I'm trying to bootstrap a software product (see profile) and would love to get a marketing advice on how to, well, market the thing.

- I Can Help With

Anything .NET. Close to 10 years of experience with everything starting from backend high-performance services to front-end with ASP.NET MVC to APIs and everything in between.

I began work on a project about two months ago. I'm convinced people would pay for this cryptocurrency-related service.

I'm learning full-stack JS as I go and sometimes I wish I had someone to code with. One problem I see is how to keep my idea mine while getting help from others?

"One problem I see is how to keep my idea mine while getting help from others?"

Generally, don't bother. Focus on executing fast and well. Otherwise, someone else who does focus on execution will have your idea before you're done and blow you out of the water - blow everyone else out instead, with whatever resources you can bring to bear.

Same as you (except experienced JS dev). Good low level understanding of Bitcoin protocol (although still learning new stuff every day...). Ping me on Freenode (olalonde) or email (see profile).

Send me an email. I'm learning a lot of JS right now as well and with an interest in crypto-currencies, I may be able to help.

Hi,

I have a opensource project I would like to have off the ground. It's a Web based chat much like Hipchat and Slack... It is still in early stage and needs a lot of design work... But anyone that want to get involved is more than welcome :-)

Http://Github.com/fmarani/tunnelchat

HMO: We are a startup in Asia. We are three partners (all groomed at different startups in MA, US). We provide software development and software testing (manual, automation) services. We want to generate business from US and Europe.

We really need help with marketing and sales.

Can you please elaborate a bit? Where in Asia are you located? Please write to me at lalwani.vikas20@gmail.com if you want someone in India.

Commenting so I can come back later (email also in my profile). Would be very interested in talking.

    ============================
    How I can help your project:
    ============================

My friends frequently ask me to revise their writing. I have a very good command of the English language.

I am also a very good programmer. As a freelance software consultant I work 100% from home on OLAP web applications. If you're stuck on a data design problem, need someone to riff on for debugging a problem, want help hacking together an HTML5 demo of some kind, need help reviewing software engineering job candidates, or want to do a net-based pair programming session or two, I'm available.

If you're in the Alexandria, VA area, I could even meet in person for any of this. Also, beers. Beers for project kibitz. That would help me, too. It's lonely out here.

    ===========
    My project:
    ===========

A few friends and I are developing a web-based tool for writers. We call it "Just Write, Dammit!" (https://www.justwritedammit.com)

It's free, it's open source, it's browser-based, it's responsive, it syncs your writing to Dropbox or Google Drive. It's still pretty raw, but I think there is something here that could really make a great project. Our vision is to build it into a tool that not only works well for writing, but encourages the user to write more, write better, and write to completion.

    ====================
    What I think I need:
    ====================

Mentorships. An hour or less a week to talk about where I am, where I should be going.

- a marketing mentor: I started a Google AdWords campaign yesterday, but I'm an engineer, not a marketer. I want to learn, but all I'm doing right now is random shots in the dark.

- a startup/fundraising mentor: if this is a project that could take off and find traction, I'd like to run a kickstarter or find some other patronage to be able to work on it full-time. What you see here is basically three weeks of part time work. If it were my job, I could make it into something great.

- a user experience-centric developer or mentor, for building an on-boarding experience for new users: while part of the experience is that it is a streamlined tool, there isn't much to help people who aren't my best friends who can call or email me at any time they want.

My email is in my profile and on the JWD website.

I've starred your JWD project. Always on the lookout for a good writing program. :)

Thanks! If you use it, please feel free to post issues on the Github issues list. Also, I'd be very interested to hear if you have experience with other writing packages--perhaps Sigil, yWriter, or Scrivener--and what you like about them.

Hey,

I don't really get the app. Can you provide a quick introduction on what it does?

Currently, it's a distraction-free writing program that syncs your writing across devices. People find the austere layout ran in fullscreen mode to help them focus on long writing sessions.

My wife and a friend of mine both "won" NaNoWriMo using a previous, desktop-only version. It was very similar to programs like ZenWriter or FocusWriter.

I've since rewritten it as a single-page web app to start to target a few features at smartphones. To that end, it sports a responsive layout that automatically drops you into a snippets form on mobile devices for quickly jotting down and saving ideas. The writing mode is also useable on a smartphone as well, but nobody has used it significantly for that yet, so I don't know if people find it very helpful.

I'd like to eventually build in better management of book-writing projects, basic formatting and ePub export, text analysis algorithms for honing the writing, and "creativity encouraging" minigames that serve to stimulate the writer out of writer's-block or teach us better writing habits.

I am a data scientist with 10+ years of experience in Machine Learning. I am looking for consulting work. Please HMO by introducing me to start-ups looking to get started with data science. I will do discovery for free for right clients.

I am trying to raise some small amount of money for a new website that enables people to donate money for a cause. its completely non profit. i need help with doing a crowd funding campaign , video etc. on kickstarter/indigogo

HMO - answer questions about your college for my startup: http://www.collegeinsideview.com/.

I'd be happy to return the favor! azerner3@gmail.com

# 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.

Cool idea! A few random ideas and thoughts that may or may not be useful:

1) seems like a perfect complement to something like mattermatrk: http://mattermark.com/ perhaps try reaching out to those guys? They offer startup tracking so pairing it with this fantasy-investment style game could work well.

2) learning from fantasy football - perhaps you get people to sign up in groups and compete against each other with new money being released into the pool each month/quarter?

3) you could bring people back into the app when the startups they have invested in get in the news? This would involve building a lightweight RSS-scraper and some logic but might not be too hard and would add a nice feedback loop for the product.

4) maybe you let people use (small amounts of) real money to invest in the startups, and let people buy and sell their investments? Kind of like a second market platform? this would make it inherently more compelling for people to stick around but it's almost certainly a lot more work to build...

1) I've actually spoken with Mattermark before (not about this), they're really cool guys and if I get super-serious about this idea then I'll definitely reach out to them. I'm actually planning on using their API for part of this (see below).

2) Yknow, believe it or not I didn't actually think too much about this. I guess I assumed the details would be too different for me to borrow much from them. I'll definitely give it a look though.

3) Not a bad idea. I would hope to monetize somehow, but a monthly subscription would have fairly little value if I'm only checking in with them once every few months.

4) I wish! Chances are any accredited investors would already be using AngelList for that, and obviously I can't let unaccredited investors make investments (plus then startups would have to be on board, basically a whole giant mess).

Thanks a lot for your thoughts!

One thing I'm thinking for the whole "returns" mechanism is to have startups return a fixed amount per hour/day/week based on their Mattermark score (basically, how much mindshare momentum they have), similar to how properties in social games give you a certain amount of currency back every [interval].

I could also consider income: most investors have some sort of regular income they use for investments, as opposed to purely bootstrapping off of the first few investments. That could be interesting (perhaps as you level up, by making sound investments, your income rises?).

I need some help with public IPV6 networking on ubuntu. I have a pool of public IPV6 address's that I'm trying to route to private LXC containers and can not figure out the configuration.

You can now push your HMO's here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7579648

HYO: link me your startup or project and I'll review it and if you're interested suggest some growth hacks.

I'm moving to Boston. I am looking for someone to help me through the ropes. I have tenacity.

wittedhaddock [at] gmail [dot] com

Meta: Shouldn't each of these be posted as an individual thread with a subject prefix of "HMO: "?

No, this is just the opposite of that. One click and scroll.

Help me out:

+ Experience in doing web Analytics analysis

+ Experience in doing customer service (I already do it in the corporate world)

Email in profile.

HMO, we always need help, to grow

www.mountary.com/blog/2014/4/11/how-can-i-help

HMO:

I am launching a message board/forum powered by Google Drive. getforum.us (Every 'workspace' is a Google Doc and all the documents attached are stored on your Google Drive.) I would love feedback on the user experience and your thoughts on the product.

How I can help: I can look at your product and use/review it for design and features. I also know some html5 and frontend javascript stuff if you have questions.

Have a contact address?

Minor thing upfront: The Signin-Workflow. First, signing in with Google, ok. Then, signing in again with Google into Forum? That didn't work, I tried it multiple times, until I just waited a bit after the login and the forum appeared by itself.

I'm behind a slow, flaky connection, but she seemed to be alright that moment.

hey I'm at admin@nimbusbase.com, thanks for the notice. I think there might be some problems with our login, will look into it.

I would be happy to give you some feedback. Email is ewharton6 at google's popular email.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com