Ask HN: What project are you currently working on? – April | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What project are you currently working on? – April

26 pointssideproject40 comments

There used to be this type of questions on a monthly basis and it was always fascinating to see what people were working on. :) So I thought I might post it up again since I haven't seen one in awhile.

What side project are you working on right now?

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It started out as a clone of http://nightchamber.com. That functionaluty was simple to emulate. Now I am trying to build a complete loginless social network. Although, the logging in process is highly device dependent, it will involve making the user approve the devices he intends to use the network from. What's fun is the number of ways I had to come up with that will make sure that the correct user is logged in regardless of the device he accesses it from.

Its on github: http://github.com/arkokoley/nightowl

Seems you're building an authentication mechanism which is based on private links. You should keep in mind that with services like similarweb.com, which steal users click-stream using a number of extensions that sell them this data, the concept of private links no longer esxists. Open a link in your browser, an extension sends it to similarweb.com, and the "private" url will be displayed on their dashboard, to their premium users.

The authentication mechanism actually uses cookies, that don't expire for a long time, to authenticate the user. Private links come in when the user wants to log in via a device which he does not usually use.

Interesting... Care to explain the concepts behind your loginless auth? In a sentence or two? Thanks! (do not have time to go through code myself :( )

Whenever a user visits the website, a session cookie is created in the user's system, that is set to expire after 15 years. Using this cookie data, I identify and authenticate the user.

The user also has a private url which he can use to login using other devices. Once logged in from this unidentified device, another cookie is created for the user but with a short time span. The user has the option to set the device as trusted which will result in the cookie expiry to be set at 15 years.

OK, got it.

You probably ask for user's email and send them their secret special link that could be used over and over to restore the cookie? in case if they accidently delete their cookie?

Not yet. Currently the user has to make sure to save that link. There is no recovery if they delete the cookie and have no access to the secret link. This idea originated from NightChamber which refrains from asking for any kind of user details to maintain anonymity. But that might have to change with my implementation because of the social network like features. Emailing the secret link seems good, now that I think about it. Thanks!

I left my job at the start of 2015 and started a company, which I've very recently launched: Pleasant.io. It's a website analytics service for humans, basically. Really simple, straight forward UI with an emphasis on useful data. If you're not a fan of Google Analytics, you might find Pleasant to be a breath of fresh air.

Clickable link: http://pleasant.io/

Managed to release my cross-platform mobile music game.

Flaming Notes, the music game to learn staff notation (iOS/Android/Web)

Landing page: http://www.adhyet.com

Short description:

Randomly generated quarter notes (crotchets) move from the right to the left. Player has to guess each note by pressing the correct button. Player wins points on a correct guess. Four successively correct guesses increases the speed of the moving notes.

HTML5-JavaScript lite/demo version: http://www.adhyet.com/flamingnotes

iOS version: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flaming-notes/id963392462

Android version: http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adhyet.flam...

Tech: mobile version built using the C++ engine, cocos2d-x. Web version created by porting to JavaScript, based on cocos2d-JS. I did contribute to the new Programmer's Guide (http://www.cocos2d-x.org/programmersguide/) and have written some guides on IAP and leaderboard integration (http://www.adhyet.com/post)

Currently working on finishing up the Windows Phone version.

I have been working working on some small issues in https://github.com/servo/servo working my way to bigger issues. Also I have been working on a bittorrent client in Rust, it is my project to learn the language.

My project may be a bit different from most as it is hardware. I've been building a photo booth and associated photo booth hire business over the last few months.

Had the first event two weeks back which ran great. Made a few improvements and had it out again last weekend. Next 4 weekends have bookings, and starting to fill up for bookings late this year and early next year.

Professional photography was taken of the booth yesterday which will be used for marketing purposes (it was quite hard to get the bookings without having a completed unit!). I am now ready to start ramping up the marketing (/bookings).

Next step is to improve the website (which I made in Webflow). If you are interested, clickable link is https://readysteadybooth.com.au

I'm working on a 2d game engine built with LÖVE (the framework, but also the emotion) called Grid. http://www.andrewmcwatters.com/grid/ It's built by me and friends at Planimeter, my super volunteer contributor team. http://www.andrewmcwatters.com/planimeter/

It's not 1.0.0, yet though. Maybe in a few months to a year or so. It's a spare time thing.

It's hosted on my site, which was featured on Bootstrap Expo yesterday, and currently sits next to New Relic.

This is a great Ask HN, and the first time I've seen this asked. I'd love to see this pop up more.

In slow motion, Tetris written in Nim. It's really just to get familiar with Nim again and to complete a game for the first time in a long time.

Working a full time job that requires being out of the house for 14 hours a day a lot and parenting at home so I expect this to be a long project. :)

I've been picking up where I left off about a year ago on http://introtopython.org, an open resource for teaching and learning Python. It's based on IPython notebook, so anyone who knows how to work with IPython notebooks can contribute to the project.

I wrote most of the Python Essentials notebooks last year, and then had to focus on other work for a while. Now I'm updating the infrastructure so it plays nicely with IPython 3. Then I get to focus on projects, which will make the site much more useful to people learning Python.

Happy to hear feedback and build collaboration on the project.

http://QRID.com - liberating people from passwords - mobile app / OpenID / OIDC Provider - allows touchless login to websites by scanning QR code on your monitor

http://BitExperts.com - almost like StackOverflow, but with Bitcoin tips and bounties. Also could be used for brainstorming ideas, with an optional bounty pool

http://BitNews.com - aggregates news headlines from 26 bitcoin websites in a mobile-friendly format

I'm working on Bulk Resize Photos. (http://bulkresizephotos.com/)

It resizes batches of images in your browser. It doesn't do anything Adobe CS can't do, but most folk (outside of designers) don't have Adobe CS. It's also extremely convenient since all you need is a browser; nothing to install or sign up for. It can also be embedded onto external sites (eg. forms that require images be uploaded) with preset resizing settings.

I'm working on mobile app to easily organize skateboard sessions. https://twitter.com/GetSeshApp

Sweet! Good luck with it. I just followed you. Looking forward to skating with some people in NYC.

Thanks ;) Hope to launch it soon on the App Store!

I haven't skateboarded in years, but some of my fonder memories was just me and like the regular 4-5 other kids going out and skating around town together.

- An entry for PoC||GTFO (no details yet)

- A secure code delivery project called ASGard: https://getasgard.com

- A tool to diff PHP Archives https://github.com/paragonie/pharaoh

- Confirming and responsibly disclosing a Laravel 0day

- Putting together a talk about developing crypto features in your apps (by using safe crypto libraries rather than rolling your own)

https://getasgard.com - kudos on your landing page - it looks great, and is also informative.

Since you use blockchain ... What are incentives for people to actually run this blockchain on their computers? Are software packages themselves physically stored in a blockchain? Or just signed metadata about package, including external download url?

Sorry lots of questions... This is because I am getting over excited when I see projects related to crypto design / blockchain / Bitcoin

http://rebrickable.com - Figure out what new cool stuff you can build with your old LEGO collection.

I am working on a online newsreader that allows you to quickly read only important articles from websites and blogs of your choice. Every article gets analyzed and evaluated, and uninteresting articles get filtered out. So you don’t have to read all articles of your favorite websites and blogs – only the important ones will be shown to you.

http://zebrello.instapage.com

Great looking landing page!

So how does filtering work? I guess user would need to provide custom set of keywords? Can they specify Regex? Are keywords used against article title or against the whole body?

If you are matching against article body, do you have any logic that would determine location of "article meat" or "article body boundaries", i.e. would strip out header / footer / ads / comments / navigation links etc?

Thanks!

Thx!

For the first release we analyze the popularity of an article by likes, shares, count of reads, etc. For the second step we analyze also the body.

We are using only RSS, so we have no header/footer/comments/navigation. Ads we remove by converting html to text.

Nothing currently...trying to find some time for maintenance on https://github.com/jdc0589/JsFormat, and maybe finishing up the last couple big bugs/features on https://github.com/jdc0589/mite-node

I have been working on and helping out with some maintenance on https://github.com/doublespeakgames/adarkroom. It's a really fun, minimalist text game with a ton of potential. It is worth checking out!

I am working on timeblock.com it's a new way of working, like agile but more humane.

It started as a change I made to how my consultancy worked, when I told others about the benefits like sleeping better and being more happy, others started to work using the same method.

Now I am creating a SaaS app and book to help others get the same benefits.

I am currently working on establishing a company builder (high equity ownership of each venture, lots of shared resources, mostly internal ideas, quick and lean implementations, an experimental approach).

Not ready for public exposure yet. Always looking for feedback and tips on this approach to solving problems!

- a Windows application for the open lab at my school (to replace the sign in/sign out clipboard.)

- building Space Invaders in C++ using an entity component system that i'm also writing.

- random Unity, Corona SDK and SDL tutorials.

- a HNlike clone in PHP, off and on when I get bored with everything else.

No repos, sorry. Nothing is worth sharing yet.

I am working on a parser for css, you plug css in and you get an useful, manageable data structure out...

https://github.com/siscia/css-grammar

I am working on this: http://www.fillburt.com. A tool to fill out job apps faster. I am in the process of validating it. Any feedback is welcome.

This looks great - nice landing page, explains clearly what it does, and may actually help some people to apply for jobs

Jobvite integration?

https://www.syncany.org/ - A secure open-source cloud storage and filesharing application.

I'm working on a split testing service and SDK for desktop (OS X) and mobile apps. Mainly for myself so I can understand the math behind A/B testing better.

I have been working on a food and travel tip related web app. Its a long term thing as I work full time, but it is something I enjoy doing on the side.

I am writing an ebook on design for developers. Would love to hear from anyone interested in giving feedback / suggestions.

hello@angelasmith.com.au

working on Frontend as a Service project - http://frontendy.com still a lot of work to do )

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