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bcjordan

2,367 karma · joined October 18, 2008

If you want to reach me, DM this same username on Twitter!
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bcjordan··on Towards a Harness That Can Do Anything
Feel like there's now a lot of modern software that can do particular things well but there is new promise in finding universal abstractions that can ideally run recursively / safely run any software at their leaves. (Unix + tooling is most of the way there ofc)

I feel like Docker Compose / K8S / VM / Dagger.io layers are close but can't quite always recurse flexibly and aren't always simple to run with. Networking / devices / auth are often awkward choke points

bcjordan··on Show HN: FablePool – pool money behind a prompt, and Fable builds it in public
This was a pre-LLM YC startup AssemblyMade which was basically this
bcjordan··on Ian's Shoelace Site
There's an awesome book Ian put out with laces on the cover and illustrations of all his lacing and knot suggestions. Potential future gift!
bcjordan··on Show HN: The Unite real time operating system
Really interesting. Feels like a fun platform to tinker with like "circuit bending" to make surprising behaviors happen across the entire OS

I wonder what the ideal demo of this that makes its approach visually legible would be

bcjordan··on Show HN: I Built a Customer Feedback Tool
> turn ideas into action

Taking this to extreme degree — could wire up a GitHub/`claude` workflow that automatically generates pull request implementations of top-rated features (e.g. with branch previews hooked up so you can just try it and approve)

bcjordan··on A game of learning your homelab into a cyberpunk mystery adventure
Note there is a CLAUDE.md file in the repo, so this was likely built at least in part with Claude Code.
bcjordan··on Dead Games
Deep cut but he also open sourced Facepunch.Steamworks which turned Steam SDK / C# integration from brutal to delightful
bcjordan··on Show HN: Eonfall – A new third-person co-op action game built for the web
In the most recent game I automated builds for the initial build took 1-3 hours, but subsequent builds with the Library/ folder cached took 5-10 minutes.

Are you switching platforms between builds locally? (like building one for web / server / pc / mac etc). Platform switching essentially blows away the cache, making it take the full build time each time. There was an asset years back that would create folders for each platform's Library/ cache and switch between them when you switched build platforms.

In CI (eg using https://game.ci) you can prefix build cache keys with the platform to manage that automatically.

Unity Cloud Build is in general slower/more flakey/sometimes has cache issues compared to DIY CI, but it should speed up after a successful first build as long as it caches the Library/ folder, and they do separate that out by build platform properly. (Worth checking each build config setting is set to cache that)

bcjordan··on Show HN: Eonfall – A new third-person co-op action game built for the web
Curious, are the slow build times locally, your own CI or Unity Cloud Build? (If local/own builders may be some ways to dramatically lower the build times eg by managing the Library/ cache per-platform.)

Happy to help anyone with optimizing these approaches it's been a pain to figure out

bcjordan··on NYC Announces 'Drone as First Responder' Program to Reduce Response Times
Curious which companies / startups are working in this space? Axon (formerly TASER), any others?
bcjordan··on A Collection of Free Public APIs That Is Tested Daily
Examples page for an app that generates an app given any API
bcjordan··on Avante.nvim: Use Your Neovim Like Using Cursor AI IDE
Btw if anyone is trying out a move from JetBrains IDEs to Cursor (or VSCode base) I found it essential to select the JetBrains mapping in the VSCode keyboard config. Many of the refactors / diff jumping / commit shortcuts are supported out of the box and it's a much smoother transition when you don't need to retrain muscle memory / look up whether a given feature is supported while learning the new editor
bcjordan··on Show HN: I Made a Website for Problems
Ooh that is an interesting focus, I personally love sharing and reading about startup ideas and can't get enough of that content online.

In case it's interesting, along this direction there's halfbakery, pg's essay on how to find startup ideas, YC's RFS posts, and more recently the Startup Ideas podcast/youtube channel which features guests sharing ideas they've been thinking about.

Edit: I see you updated the site with example problems, those are great. I could see this being a great structure for collective solution ideation.

bcjordan··on Show HN: I Made a Website for Problems
Curious was there a problem that inspired you to create the website? Could be inspiration to scope down the website focus some, or have an example problem/solution on the front page
bcjordan··on Show HN: Telemetry.sh – Simplifying Telemetry Measurement
This is a really nice dev-friendly API, could see it becoming a compelling go-to for eg indie hackers who have moved simple view analytics to reasonably priced tools like Plausible/SimpleAnalytics over the years.

In some ways it feels like Loggly, worth taking a look at their query/dashboard system as it has some really nice tools for clicking around to slice and dice graphs using unstructured data.

Will have to give it a try some time!

bcjordan··on Sqlite-vec: Work-in-progress vector search SQLite extension that runs anywhere
Curious what applications for vector search you've found interesting
bcjordan··on Show HN: I built a full-text search for your browsing history
Does this have semantic search of some form? May be possible to implement all client-side with local browser models soon
bcjordan··on Show HN: Every mountain, building and tree shadow mapped for any date and time
You might consider making a tool for wireless internet service providers and mapping Crown Castle / other roof antenna space services. This would be really helpful in determining uplink reach (just may need some parameters on roof-top blocking structures)
bcjordan··on Ask HN: How do people create those sleek looking demos for startups?
ScreenStudio is really good, I use it for all of my capture. Main feature I find missing is ability to reorder or combine multiple recordings into one clip, or add audio from within the app.
bcjordan··on Orange Meets: a demo application built using Cloudflare Calls
What bandwidth does a typical video call use per hour?
bcjordan··on Show HN: #!/usr/bin/env docker run
Yes I love this approach, I use this exact format as a way to get ChatGPT to work with an entire multi file programming project in a single idempotent bootstrapping script. Then ask for changes to be given as the entire file again
bcjordan··on Gemini AI
better than chatgpt? Or canned because hallucinations were even worse?
bcjordan··on I accidentally saved my company half a million dollars
It is really what you want out of a hacker-stuck-in-corporate story.

There was a tale maybe 10+ years ago about someone who automated their job with a script or Excel sheet or macro and didn't tell anyone about it. Having a hard time tracking it down again, anyone remember what that was?

bcjordan··on "We have a thermal printer hooked up to the internet, you can send us a doodle"
Lmao I love this. Is there a collection of these sorts of real-time experiments? Every so often a remote control robot to printer will come up on here/back in the day Slashdot/Reddit/Fark and it's loads of fun. I remember having a great time as a kid trying to flip the Plantraco remote control car by driving up the corner of the wall
bcjordan··on Show HN: Modern Moodle learning platform open-source alternative
This is really exciting, one of those projects I've been tempted to build myself over the last decade+. There's a massive unmet market need for an LMS that plays well with other open source web software (integration with the existing OSS LMSes is a startup MVP's worth of effort itself).

Are there samples of dynamic web activities one could look at / a template format? It would be amazing if there were a way to provide interactive web activities hosted as open source (e.g. a repo that provides a ThreeJS activity with block-based coding, or e.g. a writing activity that measures language grade level while the student is writing).

Also curious if there are plans for localization support? (This can be tough to add on later with heavily dynamic/interactive blocks and activities)

bcjordan··on The U.S. Government Has $5B in Bitcoin
interesting Q of the schelling point for such a scenario. maybe blockchain / stenography in wikipedia / his original paper/post / usenet

if he kicked off a treasure hunt puzzle through some time-released clue in the future he'd basically be Ready Player One's James Halliday :D

bcjordan··on Llama 2 Everywhere (L2E): Standalone, Binary Portable, Bootable Llama 2
This does seem like where composable fine-tuning / memory-encoded knowledge graphs will end up.

Couple related things in this direction that may be leveragable:

- WikiData: https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/

- Knowledge Futures' Underlay: https://docs.underlay.org/history

bcjordan··on FreeTube – The Private YouTube Client
Freedom of expressions
bcjordan··on Llama 2 Everywhere (L2E): Standalone, Binary Portable, Bootable Llama 2
Can one write installable apps for this OS that Llama can call out to?

We need to go deeper!

bcjordan··on OpenAI is exploring making its own AI chips
Still feels like they're laser-focused on achieving AGI/aligned ASI. Improving chips and evolving the UX feel like cohesive (possibly requisite) intermediate steps
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