
Ask HN: What are you working on this week? - zatkin
I haven&#x27;t seen a thread posted like this before, so I thought I&#x27;d ask.
======
krapp
Building Space Invaders in C++/SDL[0] and the entity-component framework it
uses. This week I'm working on GUI basics and event handling, so hopefully it
starts _looking_ like an actual game.

Also continuing the basic Game Development (Unity3D) course at Coursera[1]

[0][https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/spaceinvaders](https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/spaceinvaders)

[1][https://www.coursera.org/learn/game-
development](https://www.coursera.org/learn/game-development)

------
stevekemp
I have a service which allows git to be used to manage DNS. The way this used
to work was that you'd host your DNS records in a github/etc repositories,
configure a webhook to point to my server, and then your updates would trigger
DNS-updates.

Rather than fighting to understand webhooks from the various git-hosting
services I've decided that volume is low enough that I should just host the
git repositories myself.

I've spend a few evenings preparing for this transition, updating
documentation, and reworking my codebase to avoid all use of webhooks.

It's a fun update, which will simplify the service for new users, but keeping
both systems in use at the same time makes it a little more complex than I'd
like. I guess I need a flag-day in a few months where I drop the old webhook
support.

~~~
strick
That is very cool. Any chance a company could run that tool on premises? I
think there is a market for that.

~~~
stevekemp
Given that it ultimately pokes around with Amazon's route53 infrastructure I'm
not too sure that there'd be a gain if the site/processor were available in-
house.

Even if the manipulation were local, the Amazon API would be remote, and not
within a company's control.

Interesting idea though. Most of the backend is portable perl and easy to pull
out..

~~~
strick
Lots of companies already trust AWS and host various services there. Many of
those companies might not trust your git servers to be up and running 24/7
with Amazon-like SLAs.

~~~
stevekemp
Thanks for the interesting perspective. I guess when I strip it down I've
written a tiny layer of magic to convert a (bastardized)TinyDNS zone-file, or
Bind zonefile, into Amazon Route53 update commands.

Selling that as a one-off utility would be hard, but it does currently work
well as a hosted service via the webhook integration-layer, and a small amount
of git-magic.

I will have a think to see if people would prefer it self-hosted, though
nobody has expressed any interest in that previously.

------
eterm
I'm working on solving a problem I've been playing with for a while.

Fundamentally it involves picking a feasible solution from a solution space of
(225 choose 45) possible solutions.

That number is obviously too big to brute force randomly, but I was able to
get very close to a solution by hand, and so it feels like there ought to be
an algorithm to generate a solution. (It doesn't feel like a problem where the
solution wouldn't be polynomial time.)

It feels like some kind of branching with aggressive pruning would deliver a
solution but I have much I need to learn first to actually develop it.

------
joshschreuder
There was a thread posted 2 hours before you posted this :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10291148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10291148)

------
cdvonstinkpot
Just launched [https://crypt0.space/](https://crypt0.space/), a new bitcoin &
litecoin mining pool. Working on adding MixPanel analytics, & advertising with
the right orgs to try and get my first users to use it. Have a 0.027 BTC
bounty to get someone to connect a couple miners to it & test it so I know it
works.

~~~
NumberCruncher
Opening the url on my phone I get a security warning. Kind of bad marketing...

------
brudgers
Finishing Part I of _The RSpec Book_. The hands-on tutorial is giving me a
feel for why BDD's advocates advocate BDD. It also giving me a feel for the
cost of another layer of tooling on top of the "running code".

Continuing: Coursera _Modeling Discreet Optimization_ : I wish MiniZinc had
better tooling and documentation.

------
drmarkrbaker
Just getting out the first HVSImage 2016 behavioral tracking system for Mercer
University. The original machine was slightly slow in tracking and real time
analysing due to the i5 chip being a little below par - now I'm slightly slow
in testing due to being coshed in Geary prior to flying back on Saturday. . .

------
caio1982
I'm drifting, dunno if that really counts. Trying to get rid of some bugs of
WTF level that I only see in my own machine and that I can't really use to
justify my paid time, so I'm getting stressed out by the minute (after a few
days already) while I try to figure it out and go back to regular work.

~~~
i336_
Very vaguely, what kinds of bugs? I'm curious.

Can you whole-world clone the entire stack you're working on/with?

1\. Verify the bug exists in your whole-world clone

2\. Chop bits out of one of the copies until the bug goes away, and/or see if
you can copy the whole world to another machine (which you've probably already
tried)

Alternatively, perhaps let fixing this bug go, and as was suggested, use
another machine (or a VM, if that's fast enough and it "fixes" it) for now.
You might figure it out while you work on something else.

This position is horrid to be in :P but letting go _right now_ in this
situation is sometimes the least long-term damaging solution.

------
archimedespi
School! And robotics team stuff.

I'm currently polishing a Slack chatbot for engineering-notebook-chatops,
working on some boards in Eagle for a universal, multicell NiMH charger, and
also hacking on my fork of ReplicatorG (I'm trying to clean the code up, it's
a bit WTF-y right now).

------
jordsmi
I've been getting some landing pages and ad copy ready for when the Instagram
ads go public, which I was told is tomorrow.

Also, I am working on adding a test suite to one of my previous applications
that I made. I finished up the model/controller tests, so am on to the
integration tests.

------
DrNuke
Manually wrangling recent nuclear eng research docs to get and homogenise data
for my own research protocol. Hopefully the protocol will become the template
for the work of a remote network / open community of independent nuclear
researchers in the months to come.

------
hanniabu
I'd love to build a SAAS so now I'm trying to figure out what type I'd like to
create. Also doing research on everything involved from what tools to use to
lessons learned from those before.

------
zolokar
I'm trying to learn Rust. The Getting Started documentation on [https://rust-
lang.org](https://rust-lang.org) has been pretty interested so far.

------
nyddle
Coursera cryptocurrency tech course,
[https://www.coursera.org/course/bitcointech](https://www.coursera.org/course/bitcointech)

------
bakztfuture
Startup Timelines

[http://www.StartupTimelines.org](http://www.StartupTimelines.org)

------
raimille1
Building www.heynay.com and you should definetly check it out and critique it
if you have time :)

~~~
jnbiche
Heynay looks very interesting and promising. Very attractive design.

In terms of critiques, I know this seems like a petty critique, but it's
important: make sure to check your spelling and/or improve your spelling in
English. The word is spelled "definitely", for example. Since you're
representing Heynay, it's important to give a good impression, and I can tell
you that major spelling errors will give a poor impression to the majority of
the population, particularly among exactly the people you want to impress.

Again, it's a petty criticism, but the small details like spelling are well
worth paying attention to, as they serve as useful signals to many people.

------
Nicholas_C
Trying to map census data for my city using Python to retrieve the data and R
to make the map.

------
Essa
Applying for TC Disrupt London and trying to plan next steps for a travel app
I am working on

------
tmaly
fixing up the javascript to my mobile web app that focuses on food. I have to
try to find beta users who like to eat out as my next task.

------
jcfausto
Working on a personal project built with rails and reactjs :-)

------
sotojuan
Learning Elm!

