
Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool? - type12
I&#x27;m working on a self-service product for SaaS that predicts which users will churn, are ready to buy or upgrade. This is something I desired to have at my previous company, and I just thought this would be the right time to build it.<p>You?
======
kwillets
I've been looking at Apache Arrow
([https://arrow.apache.org/](https://arrow.apache.org/)) and trying to figure
out how to integrate it into the browser. It's an in-memory data format, and
the idea is to share the same data chunks amongst various clients, but shared
memory in javascript got nuked by Spectre, unfortunately. I'd like for the
same data to be accessible from, eg, multiple tabs or session-wide without
copying, so it's like a shared cache that mmap's or shmat's its objects into
each consumer on a read-only basis.

If we get this to work we make data a lot easier to play with in the browser;
the user can load the data once and then play with the presentation or slice
and dice it in multiple ways without overhead.

------
decil
Working on open source cache server
[nuster]([https://github.com/jiangwenyuan/nuster](https://github.com/jiangwenyuan/nuster)),
migrating to HAProxy v1.8

------
NVRM
Since many months, I am building back my very own base tools. Alternatives to:
grep, cat, apt, tail, head, cut, awk, sed, inotify, macro recorder, gif
recorder, etc... Yes, reinventing the wheel, my very own set of. It appear to
be an incredibly good experience. Both of my tools performs over the
originals, this wasn't my first goal! Using them in other projects is
amazingly faster than i can imagine. Facing real cases, I modify them to
perform better and better. I can't advise it much than anything else. This is
exactly what an old mechanics do. His tools perfoms over anything you can gift
him.. ;)

------
elliottinvent
Thanks for the opportunity for some self promotion! I'm working on a new data
serialisation language that focuses on character efficiency. It's around 30%
more character efficient than JSON at a basic level but 60%+ more efficient
for complex objects.

Minimal Object Description Language

[http://www.modl.uk](http://www.modl.uk)

It's cool because MODL makes it possible to store objects in places that have
extremely limited capacity like DNS TXT records, QR codes and RFC tags.

------
elderK
I'm working on a bunch of lexer and parser related tools for personal use.

The reason they're cool is that it automates a lot of the tedious, error-prone
stuff that I've been doing by hand as I experiment with grammars and the like.

Sure, there are a ton of tools out there to generate lexers and parse tables
and such. But using them doesn't help me understand how they were built.

And using them doesn't produce the same sense of accomplishment or, at least
for me, /depth/ of understanding.

I try to document the tools as best I can so that fellow students who are
interested in such things can learn or make use of them. :)

------
atsushin
I'm working on a piece to go into my portfolio. It's a guidebook for companies
navigating crisis communication during and after security incidents occur,
such as breaches. I'm only an undergrad so I don't have much experience, so a
lot of it is compilation and synthesizing professional advice (properly
attributed of course), but with my own recommendations and criticisms of
specific cases.

note: if anyone has particular advice to give me with this project, what you
might want to see featured, i'm all ears.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
Tesults ([https://www.tesults.com](https://www.tesults.com)) - it’s cool
because for teams of say 10 or more doing automated testing they can focus on
writing tests and maintaining automation infrastructure and allow this to
handle reporting. It also gets better and better every day. Just today,
launched a feature where csv files attached as part of a test case (like for
captured performace metrics data) are automatically visualised as scatter
charts with x and y axis fields being selectable.

------
ojuara
I'm working with my family managing our supermarket. It is not cool _at all_.

I got a Bachelors degree in CS at UFPE. I have been studying for a while to
get back to software developer career.

~~~
nicksalt
You could so some pretty cool stuff. Have you been hyper optimizing it?

Product shelve to sale ratios?

80/20 type optimizations on revenue by skus?

Traffic flow maps?

I'd love to hear some result or stories if you do end up doing some of this.

~~~
kaennar
Doing some basic image processing and tracking customers flow through the
store would be fascinating.

You could categorize what people are shopping for, how long, and what buying
one item tends to mean for the rest of their shopping cart.

I'd read that paper!

~~~
ejanus
Which paper ?

~~~
kaennar
I was implying that it would make an interesting academic paper.

------
RikNieu
I'm working on a brainstorming/idea generation site as a side-project. No idea
if people would want this.

Which lead me to down the path of wondering if there are any idea pitching
sites. In the meanwhile, I just created a subreddit(/r/ideaspitch) which could
serve that function for the time being, just so that I can relax and focus on
my original idea again...

So yes, brainstorming/idea generating tool.

------
SirLJ
AI driven stock trading robots, it's cool, because you compete in the market
with the smarts people on Earth every day and making good money in the
process...

------
dronescanfly
Electrical Vehicel Routing

Highly theoretical stuff that let me transition well from university

~~~
ejanus
Is it possible to allow me to be part of your adventure?

