Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy? - superasn
======
StavrosK
Oh man, that describes all of them.

[http://ipfessay.stavros.io/](http://ipfessay.stavros.io/) \- Publish
uncensorable essays on IPFS

[https://www.eternum.io/](https://www.eternum.io/) \- Pin IPFS files with a
nice interface

[https://www.pastery.net/](https://www.pastery.net/) \- The best pastebin

[https://spa.mnesty.com/](https://spa.mnesty.com/) \- Fuck with spammers

[https://www.timetaco.com/](https://www.timetaco.com/) \- Easily make nice-
looking countdowns

And this is just the last two months or so? Also, lots of hardware stuff:

[https://www.stavros.io/projects/](https://www.stavros.io/projects/)

~~~
azdle
Thank you for pastery. Best pastebin I've ever found, use it more than any
other.

~~~
fapjacks
Hah! I just noticed "Not a git repo" on the main page. Say no more! I
completely grok why that's there.

~~~
StavrosK
Did you grok "because I changed deployment techniques and git can't read the
commit hash any more"? :P

I was going to fix it, but I like your reaction, so I might just leave it!

~~~
fapjacks
Ah, that's funny!

------
yourduskquibble
I just saw this thread, and honestly it is probably too late to get noticed by
many, but I'm attempting to 'unsuck the web' with my project[0] by pinning
"sticky" website elements where they belong - i.e. the website header
shouldn't steal your screen real estate and scroll down the page with you.

My project/uBO filter list removes the "annoying" elements noted above as well
as other "features" of websites (e.g. social share bars, cookie notices, etc)
through a filter list that works with uBlock Origin.

I update the list often, and admittedly am probably entering into an arms race
but I'm just really sick of websites hijacking (what I think) the web was
built for (information).

Feel free to subscribe to the filter list by pasting the URL below[1] into the
'Custom' section under the '3rd-party filters' tab of uBlock Origin.

This filter list also works on mobile Firefox for Android with uBlock Origin
installed.

[0] Project Homepage
[https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances](https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances)

[1]
[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoya...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances/master/ultralist.txt)

~~~
baystep
Could you add/did you add killing the annoying "call to action" pop-up dialog?
You know, you visit an article and BAM! A fullscreen modal asking to sign-up
for their book newsletter? That would be awesome.

~~~
nitin_flanker
Also, the exit intent pop-ups. I, most of the time, just open a tab and switch
to a different tab to read the current one later and then that Pop-up comes.
It just annoys the hell out of me.

Even sometimes I don't pay much attention to it and when after reading other
tabs I come back to this tab; all I see is that pop-up standing there, asking
for attention. It even makes me forget why I even opened this tab in the first
place and makes me leave immediately.

------
dmuth
I built a website which offers real-time statistics for Philadelphia's
Regional Rail train system:
[https://www.septastats.com/](https://www.septastats.com/)

This lets public transit passengers answer questions like:

\- "My train is getting later and later, is it actually moving?"

\- "My train is getting later and later, has it actually STARTED its journey?"
(sometimes the answer is "no", sadly)

\- "Is it just my train, or are many trains running late?"

\- "What was the on-time performance of this train like yesterday? 2 days ago?
7 days ago?" (Some trains tend to be chronically late)

It may come as a surprise that the backend of the system is actually not a
database, but Splunk ([http://www.splunk.com](http://www.splunk.com)). DBs are
nice, but Splunk is fantastic when it comes to data analytics and reporting.

I'm currently waiting for Splunk to make some of their machine learning
modules available for free so that I can start pulling in weather data, train
the machine learning component against both that and the train data, and use
that to predict the likelihood of any given train becoming late.

~~~
qzervaas
This is pretty cool.

My "project that doesn't make me money" is
[https://transitfeeds.com](https://transitfeeds.com)

Currently it archives a ton of static schedule data, and some basic GTFS-
realtime archiving stuff.

My longer-term goal is to archive all the GTFS-rt feeds every 30 seconds to
provide similar analysis to what you've done here.

Obviously this requires even more storage than I'm already using and a ton of
data processing, which is probably above my pay grade.

~~~
tomascot
Do you know where the gtfs file is located by default? I know a bus company in
Argentina that has that info somewhere and Google.is using it in maps but I
couldn't find the gtfs file.

ty

------
jimhefferon
I write math texts that are Free. It is my creative outlet. My _Linear
Algebra_
([http://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra](http://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra))
has gotten some traction (and I get a small amount of money from Amazon). I
also have an _Introduction to Proofs: an Inquiry-Based Approach_
([http://joshua.smcvt.edu/proofs](http://joshua.smcvt.edu/proofs)) that I find
helps my students, but is in quite a niche area. And I'm working on a _Theory
of Computation_.

If I didn't have some creative work I would be much less happy.

~~~
Buttons840
Didn't expect to see you on HN. I also read your book for self study (not for
a class) and really appreciated all the exercises with solutions. Thank you.

------
superasn
The reason I'm asking this question is because I realized something recently.
I've been a programmer all my life. I used to love programming in Delphi, VB
:P, Perl, PHP, Javascript, etc since school. I created all sorts of stupid
things like Winamp plugins[1], Graphics software[2], Games, etc. It was
programming just because i liked making the computer do things for me.

But then somewhere along the line my projects started making me money and then
I start reading all these marketing books and my perception changed. Now if
I'm creating a site I'm usually more focused on SEO, list building and
crippling my software so that I can extract more money from my users. I am
making more money but the joy of doing it is gone. I feel bored writing
software and generally browse HN and reddit and generally force myself to
work.

Maybe it's time to go back to the basics and work on stuff just for sheer joy
of doing it :D

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2008/09/27/songrefernce-turns-your-
mp...](https://techcrunch.com/2008/09/27/songrefernce-turns-your-mp3-playlist-
into-a-video-playlist/)

[2] [http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/extreme-article-marketing-
conve...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/extreme-article-marketing-convert-your-
articles-into-cool-videos/)

~~~
sgentle
I think this is the worst thing about startup culture. Don't get me wrong, I
like startups, but there's so much hype and so much money around them that it
sucks all the oxygen out of anything else.

I can't count the number of times I've been talking about an interesting
project idea and heard "oh, so it's a startup!" Or worse, been talking to
someone else about their project idea which they immediately follow with "and
then I can turn it into a startup!" whether or not it makes any sense at all.

Recent history is littered with ideas that started as an interesting project,
turned into a startup for no reason, blew out into some hypergrowth social
unicorn, made no money, and then folded, taking the original project with
them. Looking at you, Readability.

Entrepreneurship is fundamentally creative, but not all that is creative is
entrepreneurship. Startups are a specific structure for a specific kind of
project. Trying to cram every idea into that mould strikes me as the business
equivalent of "I just learned about NoSQL and now I want to use it for
EVERYTHING".

~~~
bhnmmhmd
So what is the definition of startup from your perspective? I mean, if I have
an idea and just build it, wouldn't someone else take the idea, build it, and
look for VCs to make it profitable? In this case, isn't it better to always
look for the possibility that my idea can actually catch on?

------
raphlinus
I have a largish open-source portfolio, including a markdown parser, a regex
engine, some music synthesis, and some more researchy stuff like a font
renderer and a prototype of concurrent text editing using CRDT's. I'm lucky to
be working at Google where I get paid 20% time to work on this, but the
motivation is definitely not money.

The biggest item in my portfolio is xi-editor, and I confess I'm wrestling
with some of the questions raised in this thread. I think it has the potential
to be a serious player in the editor space, with extremely high performance
goals (including fast startup and low RAM usage) yet a modern feel. It also
has a great little open-source community around it who have been contributing
significant features.

Yet it's at the point where it's _almost_ done enough to use for day-to-day
editing, and I'm hesitating a bit before pushing it over the line. I think I'm
scared of having lots of users. It's also the case that I'm very interested in
the engine and the core of the UX, but the complete product needs a plugin
ecosystem and along with that ways to discover, upgrade, and curate the
plugins (including making sure they are trustworthy, lately a fairly
significant concern). That's potentially a huge amount of work, and it doesn't
really line up with my interests.

I'm wondering if it's possible to focus on the parts I care about and try to
foster the community to take care of the rest, but I'm not quite sure how that
would work.

If this were a business and I had some way of making a few coins from every
user, then my incentives would be lined up to make the best overall product
possible, including the less fun parts. But that's off the table; among other
things, there are a number of good free editors out there, and the niche for a
better but non-free editor is also well occupied.

Maybe the HN crowd has some ideas?

~~~
justinclift
Went looking for it, and it's showing up as mainly developed/owned by the
Google org on GitHub:

[https://github.com/google/xi-editor](https://github.com/google/xi-editor)

Kind of feels a bit weird to be considering if/how/etc to commercialise it
personally, when it would potentially be considered Google's property (?).
Even though you're clearly the main author as per its commits & README.md.
Then again, I have no idea how Google looks upon that kind of thing, so you
may be all good.

With the "it'll probably get a million users quickly" thought... hmmm...
depends if you're thinking to leverage Google's reach in some way. If so, then
yeah it might have a better than even chance to happen. :D

~~~
raphlinus
The thoughts on commercialization are a hypothetical. As I said in my original
comment, it's off the table (though I gave other reasons than being employed
by Google). I'm just saying that _if_ there were a revenue stream, then I'd be
incentivized very differently (and more in line with what users need) than
purely as a labor-of-love open source project.

And yes, if there were a good reason to, Google could bring considerable
resources (including marketing) to bear.

~~~
justinclift
No worries. I somehow didn't pick up on it being a thought experiment. Long
day I guess. :)

------
grecy
I created, run and maintain
[http://wikioverland.org](http://wikioverland.org), the community encyclopedia
of overland travel

It's a wiki of all the info you need to drive your own vehicle around a
country, continent or the world.

Border crossings, paperwork, insurance, gas prices, camping, drinking water,
safety... it's all in there for a massive number of countries in the world.

I'm driving around myself, and it occured to me there is so much info out
there but it all slides off the front pages of blogs and forums or is buried
in facebook posts. Every three months people re-write and re-post the same
stuff because they couldn't find it in the first place. The idea is not for
WikiOverland to contain all the info, but at least link directly to it.

------
ztravis
[http://www.arabicreference.com](http://www.arabicreference.com)

I've always wanted a good Arabic root-based dictionary with vowelling,
plurals, etc (basically Hans Wehr online). I also wanted the structured
dataset for some linguistic "research".

It was a fun project - I built out a web interface for reviewing and updating
entries and put in a lot of hours of manual correction (just to get all the
entries to validate - I still have a lot more corrections/fixes to make...).
I'm a little burnt out on it at the moment, but I plan on:

\- fixing those mistakes and a few other bugs

\- cleaning up the UI/display

\- moving onto a "real" server framework

\- writing up some blog posts about those short linguistic investigations I'd
like to do now that I have the structured data

\- making an API?

Notably lacking is any plan to promote it... I posted it on reddit and I'd
love it if people stumble upon it and find it useful, but I did it mostly as a
labor of love and something that I personally find useful!

~~~
abusaidm
hi, great project.

any idea if you plan to release the code or article of how you built the
similar matching?

Thanks

~~~
ztravis
Yeah, definitely! I'm planning on writing a blog post about how it was built,
and I'd be happy to release the code (although I'd like to clean it up some,
and I'm not sure how much of it would be of general interest).

~~~
abusaidm
Great, I would be interested on how you built the dataset/database. Please
share when you have the post.

------
CM30
Wario Forums and absolutely anything else associated with it:

[https://warioforums.com](https://warioforums.com)

Yeah, I know it's not particularly fancy, nor does it involve any clever
coding tricks or interesting features. However, it's literally the only
community on the internet dedicated to the series, and one I've decided to run
for a minimum of two decades to make sure said franchise finally builds a
decent fanbase.

Is it going to make money?

Probably not, given how the franchise it's based on sells about 2 million
copies worldwide at most, and hasn't gotten a new game since either 2013
(WarioWare) or 2008 (Wario Land).

But it's one with a passionate audience that up until recently had nowhere
online to discuss the series nor anywhere specifically dedicated to their
favourite franchise. So I decided to change that by setting up and promoting a
community based on it, with the guarantee I'd keep it open for decades in the
hope that eventually a community at least the size of the Earthbound one comes
about here. With the hope that eventually I won't need to run the forum
because there'll be enough sites about it to sustain a decent fandom.

~~~
iwebdevfromhome
Awesome! But looks like it's down now :(

~~~
CM30
Seems my hosting is having problems at the moment. I host Gaming Reinvented
([https://gamingreinvented.com](https://gamingreinvented.com)) on the same
server, and that's been going down a fair bit today as well.

Which is weird, given how even after being linked from the home page of
Eurogamer, Destructoid, Nintendo Life and various others all the same time, it
didn't move an inch.

Huh, guess LiquidWeb must be having a bad day or something.

Sorry about that!

------
weddpros
I built [https://sslping.com/](https://sslping.com/) to help monitor website
TLS/SSL security and certificates. It has 300 users and checks almost 7000
servers every day for TLS problems.

It's a little like SSLlabs server test, only much faster (5 seconds instead of
2 minutes), plus the tests are recurring every day, and you receive the diff
if any.

It's always been a joy to receive thank you emails from users, or adding new
features for users.

SSLping also allowed me to learn React and Redux. I'm still working on it,
adding new features and refactoring what I don't like.

If I ever have to stop hosting it, I'll open source the whole thing. Or maybe
I'll open source it anyway. If I could find a deal with a security company, I
would work on it fulltime.

I consider it's a success, even if the numbers are not as high as I'd like.

~~~
andruby
Thank you for this! I have a post-it note for sideproject ideas and wanted to
build exact system. I'm glad you already built it :) Also glad I found out
about it before building it myself.

~~~
weddpros
It's good to hear! Feel free to use it and tell me if you have any
suggestions, or anything really

------
t0mek
Yet another Game Boy Color emulator, written in Java:

[https://github.com/trekawek/coffee-gb](https://github.com/trekawek/coffee-gb)

It's quite compatible and brought me a lot of fun. Blog post describing it:

[http://blog.rekawek.eu/2017/02/09/coffee-
gb/](http://blog.rekawek.eu/2017/02/09/coffee-gb/)

~~~
Insanity
Wow, that is really cool!

I did not have the idea of creating an emulator, but some time ago I got
curious as to how games were made for the GBA, so to try that I made a small
Pong game [0]. It's really fun to play with 'old' technology from our
childhoods.

[0]:
[https://github.com/DylanMeeus/GBAPong](https://github.com/DylanMeeus/GBAPong)

~~~
devotedtoneu
Very cool.

I wonder why you disqualify your multiplayer mode? Sure on the SP it would be
unrealistic but I see no reason two players couldn't share an original model
GBA, holding one end each.

~~~
Insanity
Thank you :-) I suppose it could work indeed

------
purescript
I work on the PureScript ([http://purescript.org](http://purescript.org))
compiler, tools, libraries and book in my spare time (along with many other
unpaid contributors), because it's the programming language I wished had
existed when I started creating it. It's still the closest thing to a perfect
environment for web development, at least as far as I'm concerned :)

~~~
mikekchar
Another big thank you from me. I used PureScript to learn functional
programming. For me, being able to read the resultant Javascript made a big
difference.

Also, I have to say that your code is lovely (both the PureScript code and the
Javascript). Every time I think, "I wonder how this works/should work" I take
a quick glance and within a few minutes I have my answer. I will start reading
the compiler code when I get some time.

------
tomcam
Hope I don't get flagged or anything. I am astounded by the generosity of the
amazing people on this page and have been upvoting like a madman. I probably
look like a bot at this point

~~~
superasn
Yes people here are just awesome. When i made this thread i never expected so
many responses. It's a huge motivation for me to see how so many people are
doing so many awesome things just for the joy of doing it.

------
gadgetoid
[https://pinout.xyz](https://pinout.xyz)

A somewhat interactive GPIO pinout for the Raspberry Pi.

Not so much out of sheer joy, but because I needed it.

It started as a basic way to explore each pin and its available alt-functions.

Listings of add-on board pinouts were added later for people who want to use
multiple boards- or perhaps connect them to a different host.

~~~
kruffin
Just wanted to say a big thank you for this site. I used it when trying to
figure out how to hook up an RFID reader to the Pi. It was suprisingly hard to
find the pinout, but finally found your site. This is what I put together:
[https://bitbucket.org/kruffin/rfid_play](https://bitbucket.org/kruffin/rfid_play)

------
m52go
100 Million Books -- mission is to promote intellectual diversity.

It's a Chrome extension/homepage that shows you a new book every time you open
a new tab, plus a special hand-picked idea that teaches you a new
perspective/fact/concept.

I'm evaluating a couple different paths to make it profitable, but it's not
currently making anything since Amazon cut me off its affiliate program.

[http://www.100millionbooks.org](http://www.100millionbooks.org)

~~~
imsd
Would you be open to sharing why this was cut from Amazon's affiliate program?
Seems to be a pretty cool tool that they would want placement on.

~~~
m52go
Sure, straight from their email:

\- Lack of content which is original to your site and beneficial to your
visitors

\- Pages that are mainly empty when advertisement content is removed

Now does any of that really matter, if the service is moving books? No. But
there's no appeal process, and no one to discuss this with.

So I'm not glad it happened, but I'm glad it happened early. I've always been
hesitant about affiliate programs because of the lack of control (e.g., I
didn't launch with it; only integrated it after many users said they wanted it
so I could devote more time to it), and now that my concerns have been
verified, I know I need to be more creative.

~~~
alexkavon
Honestly there could be a better way by reaching out to other companies that
work with you and form some sort of partnership agreement. Then you could give
amazon "the finger" simultaneously...if you so desire.

~~~
m52go
There are other book vendors who've reached out to offer their affiliate
programs, but I'm not sure any of them are worth it.

From the short time I was on Amazon, the lion's share of my affiliate revenue
came from items other than books that were purchased using cookies that my app
had set.

Without those non-book items, I would've made very, very little money (e.g.,
~$5 instead of ~$300).

Books don't cost very much, but Persian rugs do! And there aren't many other
booksellers out there who also sell Persian rugs...

~~~
imsd
One idea could be to partner with publishers and maybe 10% of the time a user
opens a new tab, the book placement is sponsored. Charge based on impressions,
click-throughs, or by some other arrangement.

For users, it keeps the tool free and ideally—if the sponsored placements are
good—introduces them to cool new books.

------
snickerbockers
For almost a year, I've been writing a SEGA Dreamcast emulator called
WashingtonDC. It's slow and it doesn't play any games yet, but it can boot the
firmware menu and display the animated "spiral swirl" logo.
[https://github.com/washingtondc-
emu/washingtondc](https://github.com/washingtondc-emu/washingtondc)

~~~
kevinschumacher
How'd you name that?

~~~
snickerbockers
DC is the acronym fans usually use to refer to the Dreamcast.

------
xeo84
Touchboard:
[http://www.timelabs.io/touchboard](http://www.timelabs.io/touchboard) Open
source app for iPad to send keys to your pc / mac. I use it for gaming, I
really find it useful, here is a video of it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1KOUj9SK_c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1KOUj9SK_c)

I've also made CbrConverter: [https://github.com/timefrancesco/cbr-
converter](https://github.com/timefrancesco/cbr-converter)

Coverts pdf to cbr and vice versa.

And then there are a bunch of other small projects like:

\- Ebay Search Scheduler (schedule Ebay searches with custom parameters)

\- Twitter Time Machine (download and browse your twitter timeline)
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tweet-time-
machine-2/id83212...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tweet-time-
machine-2/id832124891?ls=1&mt=8&at=1001lpzu) \- windows version also available

\- Autosleep (put the windows down for good)
[https://github.com/timefrancesco/autosleep](https://github.com/timefrancesco/autosleep)

And many others I really enjoyed making and using.

------
codeplea
I have a lot of projects like that!

[https://f5bot.com](https://f5bot.com) \- Social media monitoring. It can
email you when your keyword (e.g. company name) appears on Hacker News or
Reddit. I don't have any plans to monetize it. I just made it as a small fun
project.

Also, like many here, I've made a bunch of open source software for no reason
other than the joy of it. Don't ever see that changing.
[https://github.com/codeplea](https://github.com/codeplea)
[https://github.com/tulipcharts](https://github.com/tulipcharts)

------
rayalez
I occasionally create digital art:

[https://www.artstation.com/artist/rayalez](https://www.artstation.com/artist/rayalez)

and make video tutorials about it:

[https://www.youtube.com/digitalverse](https://www.youtube.com/digitalverse)

Computer graphics is still by far the most fun hobby I've ever had, I
absolutely love it, it's like the most engaging computer game you can imagine
times 100.

There's not much profit in making art(unless you want to do it
professionally), but it's an awesome way to spend my free time, and sometimes
it generates some ideas I like to share on youtube.

If you want to get into it, I highly recommend checking out SideFX Houdini.
It's a bit technical, but extremely powerful and well designed 3D software,
kinda like emacs of CG applications.

~~~
tonetheman
beeeeeeeeee-youtiful stuff. Keep doing it!

~~~
rayalez
Thank you! =)

------
cknight
I built [https://suitocracy.com](https://suitocracy.com) very slowly over the
last few years. It is for collating information on the ethical conduct of
large corporations, as well as rating and ranking them on various criteria.

It'll never make money, but it has been a good project for me to modernise my
web development skills which had gone rusty over the preceding decade. I also
took the opportunity to learn NGINX and a few other things that I hadn't
really been exposed to beforehand.

~~~
TimJRobinson
Nice work! I've always wanted something like this but as a browser extension
for Amazon. On each product it would insert a box that shows how ethical the
company behind this product is. Could also show things like how sustainably it
was made and if it wad made in a sweatshop etc.

------
apancik
I made Plain Email [0] just because I couldn't find any email client with
clean work flow without distractions. I use it pretty much every day. Thinking
about open sourcing it - just can't find the time to refractor it nicely.

I also built news aggregator 10HN [1] with throttling (ten best articles every
morning and every evening). I use it daily and it helped to fight my
procrastination a lot. It's also interesting to watch the data how stories
evolve and get popularity.

[0] [http://www.plainemail.com/](http://www.plainemail.com/) [1]
[http://10hn.pancik.com](http://10hn.pancik.com)

~~~
aeorgnoieang
Is anything beyond professional embarrassment stopping you from open-sourcing
Plain Email as-is? It looks really nice.

I'm not on a Mac currently so I can't test it. What does 'defer' do?

I also do 'inbox zero' but I don't really find Gmail to be too distracting.
The _one thing_ I keep wishing for tho (in any email client) is a default
ordering/sorting of unread emails by date-time received, but in a _descending_
order. I'd love to see how hard that would be to implement with your project!

------
dogas
I built + maintain todolist[1] which is a GTD-style task management app for
the command line. It's getting a bit of traction now which is pretty fun. It
got a ton of upvotes on Product Hunt which was really cool to see[2].

I have very loose plans to monetize via a paid subscription for syncing with
other devices / phones, but there will always bee a free / open source version
as well.

[1]: [http://todolist.site](http://todolist.site)

[2]:
[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/todolist](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/todolist)

~~~
sshasan
I have been looking for something like todolist for a while now to help me
keep track of stuff. Very cool & Thank you for building this!

------
chubot
I'm building a new Unix shell called Oil:
[http://www.oilshell.org/](http://www.oilshell.org/)

It's definitely not making me any money. I would say the motivation is a
little bit "joy" / learning, but also frustration that shells are so old,
unintuitive, and work so poorly.

I've been going for about 16 months and it's still fun, so that's good. I
think that seeing progress is what make things fun.

~~~
wodenokoto
I agree that shells need a great overhaul. But how it should look and how the
path towards the "better shell" can realistically happen I have no clue.

I applaud your courage!

~~~
chubot
Thanks! I have a very clear idea, but it's a huge amount of work. I think it's
going to get there though :)

One thing that blows up the amount of work is the "realistically happen"
part... For it to happen, it needs to be compatible, and compatibility is hard
(or at least tedious).

------
vanderZwan
It doesn't have to be a full project, right? Do random drive-by PR-requests to
open-source projects count?

A few months ago I ended up scratching an optimisation itch for weeks, trying
to figure out ways to make the lz-string[0][1] library faster and smaller.
Near the end I went a bit nuts with trying out what works, methinks (nested
trees built out of arrays and such), but I had a lot of fun.

It's not even my library, nor did my PR request get accepted/rejected yet. It
did however make the compression up to 2x to 10x faster, depending on how well
the data compresses.

And hey, I now have an intuitive understanding of LZ compression that I never
thought I'd have!

Since a few days I've been working on writing a component for idyll[2] that
lets you embed p5js sketches[3]. Progress here[4][5].

[0] [http://pieroxy.net/blog/pages/lz-
string/index.html](http://pieroxy.net/blog/pages/lz-string/index.html)

[1] [https://github.com/pieroxy/lz-
string/pull/98](https://github.com/pieroxy/lz-string/pull/98)

[2] [https://idyll-lang.github.io/](https://idyll-lang.github.io/)

[3] [https://p5js.org/](https://p5js.org/)

[4] [https://github.com/idyll-lang/idyll/issues/117](https://github.com/idyll-
lang/idyll/issues/117)

[5]
[https://jobleonard.github.io/idyll-p5/](https://jobleonard.github.io/idyll-p5/)

~~~
ovrdrv3
Do you like the coding train[1]?

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/user/shiffman](https://www.youtube.com/user/shiffman)

~~~
vanderZwan
I have commented many a time on Shiffman's twitter that we need more gifs of
him dancing, so yes :)

------
TamDenholm
I'm grumpy, i dont like christmas:
[http://whychristmasisbullshit.com/](http://whychristmasisbullshit.com/)

~~~
snickerbockers
That is the realest website I've ever seen.

------
nfriedly
Everything to do with cryptocurrency! I wrote trading bot that was actually
making a small profit - and then the exchange got hacked and took all of my
coins & dollars with it :(

I've started to get into Ethereum and Solidity recently, but mining even a few
coins just to have gas money costs more in electricity than they're worth. I'm
letting my desktop mine anyways, but when I reach my pools payout threshold in
a week or two (it's got a 3-year-old GPU), I'll probably kill the mining. (I
know I _could_ just buy some ETH with USD, but that's probably even more
expensive and somehow feels different.)

(To be fair it hasn't been _all_ negative - I bought a copy of the game Portal
with the first bitcoin I ever earned, and a Kindle with the second bitcoin.
But looking at it from a strictly money perspective, I'm definitely in the
hole. In theory, it will be positive eventually.. but I'm still not sure
exactly how.)

~~~
anfractuosity
The trading bot sounded fun. I was always curious about the bots that were
apparently used on betting sites like betfair to perform arbitrage.

~~~
amingilani
I one quadrupled my capital with a betting bot running a martingale strategy.
Then I made it run overnight and lost all the funds. Turns out there aren't
any betting strategies that can last over the long run.

With a martingale strategy the chances of losing are miniscule but if you play
10,000 rounds at a 0.01% of losing, you're going to lose once. And that's when
you lose all your capital.

~~~
ssanders82
I don't think the fact that your coin-flip martingale strategy didn't work is
evidence that "there aren't any betting strategies that can last over the long
run".

~~~
amingilani
No, but over the long run, no betting system can guarantee a positive return.
If you run enough simulations, you will inevitably lose. The Wizard of Odds[1]
did a great piece on this and it's definitely worth a read.

Also, if you believe to have a betting system that does work, VegasClick[2]
runs a $30k wager against your $3k if your system can survive at least 11 of
20 200,000 round games. It's easy money.

[1]: [https://wizardofodds.com/gambling/betting-
systems/](https://wizardofodds.com/gambling/betting-systems/) [2]:
[http://vegasclick.com/gambling/betting-system-
challenge](http://vegasclick.com/gambling/betting-system-challenge)

~~~
PavleMiha
I think the other posters mean sports betting and other betting markets when
they say "betting" not just casino games where, as you rightly say, there's no
way of making money.

In sports betting markets it is theoretically possible to make money, but very
hard.

~~~
anfractuosity
Yeah I was thinking of sports betting, however I guess even in casinos you can
do card counting or apply the laws of physics to roulette wheels.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Doyne_Farmer#Beating_roulet...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Doyne_Farmer#Beating_roulette)
(although the roulette example could be classed as cheating ;)

------
jconcilio
[http://www.penginsforeveryone.com](http://www.penginsforeveryone.com) \-
giving away stuffed penguins. Just because we can. (Hoping to actually
register this as a nonprofit, but right now it's basically a completely
unprofitable business venture.)

ETA: On the development end this has been a pretty great project for my fiance
and I. He built (and I'm learning from his efforts) a database for processing
requests, filtering by priority, etc., and then an integration that allows
those we want to send to be exported to a file we can pull into our stamps.com
account, and that creates drafts of the Wordpress posts that power our map of
sent friends. The database is pretty big (we're sitting at about 21K requests
right now on a shared hosting platform) so some of the work has been to load
the requests asynchronously so you're not waiting for 21,000 rows before you
can manage requests...

------
apankrat
A networking IO abstraction library in C - [https://github.com/apankrat/tcp-
striper](https://github.com/apankrat/tcp-striper)

Based around an idea of IO pipes with minimal semantics (duplex, reliable,
ordered) that they can then extend to implement other traits like IO
buffering, atomic send, packetization, compression, encryption, etc. [1]

This then allows merging together pipes of different types (by attaching the
output of one to the input of another), which combines their traits and
yields, for example, a reliable datagram carrier with in-flight compression.

With this it also becomes possible to write a simple IO bridge [2] that relays
both data _and_ operational state between two pipes. The bridge in turn can be
used to implement all sorts of interesting things, e.g. proper TCP relay, SSL
tunneling proxy, TCP trunking proxy, etc.

[1] [https://github.com/apankrat/tcp-
striper/blob/master/src/io/i...](https://github.com/apankrat/tcp-
striper/blob/master/src/io/inc/libp/io_pipe.h)

[2] [https://github.com/apankrat/tcp-
striper/blob/master/src/io/i...](https://github.com/apankrat/tcp-
striper/blob/master/src/io/inc/libp/io_bridge.h)

------
jjjensen90
I run/develop/manage a private MMOARPG game server for a dead game called
Hellgate: London that we call London 2038. You can see more about it here
[http://london2038.com](http://london2038.com)

Not only do I not make money on the project, it actually costs me money! :)

I have seemingly undying motivation to work on it, knock out bugs, release
patches, catch cheaters, etc. The community being so active and excited helps
keep me going. I probably spend 30-40 hours of week on the project.

Edit: grammar

~~~
abledon
That was an awesome game! Great work maintaining this

------
teapot7
I guess I do ask for money for this, but it's pretty overengineered and I
wrote it knowing that nobody wanted or needed it:

Long ago, when Sun workstations were new and exciting, I wrote a simple Roman
numeral digital clock, which just showed the time in Roman numerals.

My friend, instead of admiring my cleverness, said "But that's not how the
Romans told the time" \- which is true. The Roman day started at dawn and
finished at sunset, which meant that day and night length were different every
single day, as well as in cities at different latitudes.

Several decades later I did something about it, and wrote it up as a mobile
app which showed either the modern time or optionally the Roman time.

Then I made it use the Roman calendar, where you don't have individually
numbered days of the month, but count instead how many days until the next
Kalends (start of the month), Nones (fifth or seventh day) or Nones
(thirteenth or fifteenth day), even if it occurs in the next month.

Then I thought I might as well go all the way, and spent more money than I
would ever earn from it on having the help text translated into Latin, just in
case any ancient Roman time travellers wanted to use it.

A waste of time and money, but one which made me happy.

[http://www.teapot7.com/roman-clock-app/](http://www.teapot7.com/roman-clock-
app/)

~~~
aeorgnoieang
> A waste of time and money, but one which made me happy.

Reads like the best kind of waste of time and money!

------
nikivi
I am working on a community curated search engine to learn anything most
optimally :

[https://learn-anything.xyz/](https://learn-anything.xyz/)

Everything is open source and is MIT licensed, both the search engine and the
entire database it searches over.

There are however many things that we can still do to take this idea further.
Hopefully more people join to help us with that. :)

~~~
subhashp
Very interesting concept, nice presentation! It will be valuable when lots of
experts start adding knowledge to it.

------
jtruk
130 Story - a daily microfiction challenge.

[https://www.130story.com/](https://www.130story.com/)

I started this as a Twitter game a few years ago; it felt like a compact idea
with a good hook. Earlier this year I automated it- so it picks its own words
and collates the stories on the website itself (mostly successfully).

It doesn't have a big following, but the people who play are passionate about
it. Some people play every day, and the most prolific author has written ~650
of them.

I've seen people get better as writers, some experimental stuff (like an
improvised longform story built over many daily prompts), and occasionally I
see a microstory that knocks it out the park. That makes it worthwhile.

~~~
cdelsolar
This is really cool. Some awesome little stories in there. I'm sure you're
aware of "The Red Wheelbarrow" \- such imagery in fewer than 100 characters.

~~~
jtruk
Thanks! I've had a few people trying to submit the classic six word story over
the years.

------
aroc
[http://www.get-jumper.com/](http://www.get-jumper.com/)

A way to motivate people (including myself) to exercise with a chat bot that
tracks your progress.

Originally built it to track how often I worked out, and if I didn't, what the
reason was and have that reported back to me regularly. Now I have a bunch of
people using it, but as you can imagine, makes me zero dollars. Well,
technically it costs me money so it makes me negative dollars.

~~~
longnguyen
Great job. Thanks for sharing. It doesn't recognize me though

> Hey undefined! Interested in exercising more? Great! I'm here to help!

I'm following _kaizen_ technique to improve my reading skills (eg. reading
20-30 pages, everyday). Would be interested if your bot support more than
exercise

------
martin_drapeau
Been working on
[https://www.findyourtennis.com](https://www.findyourtennis.com) since 2011.
Amateur tennis league/tournament management. 3 leagues have been using it
recurrently for 3 years here in Montreal. The managers, volunteers, save
dozens of hours every season.

Started off as a 'find a tennis partner' forum however getting traction was
difficult. Chicken and egg problem. Slowly migrating to solving problems of
league and tournament management. Will drop the forum one day. Long transition
to do part time.

Now working on a mobile version with cordova. Testing it on the league I am
managing. Saves us a lot of time since it automates lots of tasks and avoids
the use of Excel.

I don't expect to make money. Market is small and problem is tough to solve.
UX intensive. However fun to do on spare time.

My objective is to launch on the app store in 2018. Then I hope lots of
leagues around tue world will use to simplify their lives.

------
anfractuosity
A few of mine:

[https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/painting-a-
christmas-...](https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/painting-a-christmas-
tree/) \- 'painting' the LEDs on my christmas tree.

[https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/optical-magnetic-
stri...](https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/optical-magnetic-stripe-
reading/) \- optically decoding data from magnetic stripe cards.

[https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/zymeter-
simple/](https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/zymeter-simple/) \- a rather
unsuccessful attempt at measuring specific gravity.

[https://github.com/anfractuosity/musicplayer](https://github.com/anfractuosity/musicplayer)
\- playing .wav files via RF emissions from a laptop.

~~~
atomashpolskiy
I dig it. Man, this is what real engineering is supposed to look like

> I now have 57 GB of audio files of bubbles

Sounds like.. FUN!

~~~
anfractuosity
Haha, cheers

------
neya
This is my current project:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14785209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14785209).
It's too long to describe in a sentence, but, it's essentially what I call it
_the mother of all software_ (internally). I created it out of pure annoyance
towards many of the popular services such as Wordpress, MailChimp, Hubspot,
Shopify, Unbounce who had screwed up some aspect of their tools. So, in
essence this is a combination of all those softwares under one roof.

Here are some things you can do with this software:

1) Research your market, find out your target audience

2) Integrate with analytics tools and understand your users

3) Automate your marketing strategies

4) Maintain a central data warehouse

5) Maintain multi-domain content properties such as blogs, websites, news
portals, etc.

6) Host online trainings, build a student list

7) Etc. (read the link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14785209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14785209))

I've been working on it over 3 years now, while trying to jump from one web
framework to another. Finally, I've settled down on Phoenix. This project
alone has helped me learn so many programming languages and also helped me
gain more experience as a programmer in general, while simultaneously being
able to integrate new tools and platforms into my pipeline - This is how I
learned React, VueJS, Brunch, Google Cloud, etc.

At the moment, I've built this only for myself, just to support and test out
my startup ideas. I am thinking of open-sourcing it at some point, at least
the core functionality.

But as of now, there's nothing else I enjoy doing on a weekend than working on
this project :) (also why I'm still single)

~~~
Kevin_S
This is so damn cool. Can I get on a list to hear more when you're interested
in opening it up to the public?

------
yogthos
[http://www.luminusweb.net/](http://www.luminusweb.net/) and all my GitHub
projects [https://github.com/yogthos](https://github.com/yogthos)

~~~
christophilus
Well, even if it doesn't make you money, I hope you know how much you're
appreciated in the Clojure community. Thanks for all the hard work!

~~~
yogthos
Thanks, it's great to hear. :)

------
expertentipp
Dead simple personal website in Python and plain JavaScript with contact form,
URL shortener, private bookmarks, etc. It's my own territory and I do what I
want! fuck unit tests, fuck linters, fuck commit messages length limit, fuck
your newest web framework, fuck transpilers, fuck pull requests.

------
beilabs
Late arrival to this thread. One of my projects involve working with local
female co-operatives in Nepal and help them sell their hand made products
around the world. Paypal doesn't operate here, merchant services for
international cards are impossible to get. They don't understand technology in
any way and there is a lot of hand holding.

The site is [https://www.pasatrade.com](https://www.pasatrade.com)

We make no money off of this, I operate it at a loss, but each and every sale
gets more money back to the women who really need it; a few extra dollars here
and there can really make a huge difference in Nepal. The interesting part is
they make more money on each sale through us than they do locally or selling
through Fair Trade channels.

~~~
jeromegv
I have a similar website with similar concept (for Filipino products).
However, I would strongly suggest you find a way to make it a sustainable
business for you as well.

It sounds nice that you do not take a profit from it but the reality is that
your life will change and one day you won't have time for a project that makes
no money/operates at loss. Those women will start to rely more and more on the
income from your website and this would be really unfortunate if one day this
revenue totally stops because it was just a volunteer project for you. The
more sustainable it is for you, the safer it is for them.

~~~
beilabs
Yeah; I need to really put some processes in to make it more sustainable.
We're quite strict with who can come on board as we're really only looking for
non-profits or co-operatives.

~~~
jeromegv
That's awesome it's in the plan. The initiative is great! All the best from
Cambio Market.

------
yev
Making vue components:

[https://github.com/euvl/vue-js-modal](https://github.com/euvl/vue-js-modal)

[https://github.com/euvl/vue-js-toggle-button](https://github.com/euvl/vue-js-
toggle-button)

[https://github.com/euvl/vue-notification](https://github.com/euvl/vue-
notification)

~~~
cdubzzz
Nice. We looked at vue-notification for Timestrap[0] and will probably use it
whenever we get development rebooted.

[0]
[https://github.com/overshard/timestrap](https://github.com/overshard/timestrap)

~~~
yev
Wow, great! Let me know if you will need anything, I'll be happy to help you
out! :)

------
domainkiller
Nomie! [https://nomie.io](https://nomie.io) The easiest way to track any
aspect of your life.

~~~
boundlessdreamz
Thank you for nomie! This was the only app on Android which ticked all my
requirements

------
overcast
[https://kidisms.com](https://kidisms.com)

Sharing funny kid quotes.

Been going for years, not a whole lot of traffic, but the family loves it
(that was the intention). Recently migrated from a severely aging kohana/mysql
backend to express/rethinkdb.

~~~
jansho
This is great! My smaller siblings say the wittiest things (often without
realising) that brighten my day, I often wonder if there's a platform to
'record' them. I hope that your project will eventually turn into that!

~~~
overcast
Thanks, that was the intent :) Kids say a lot of great stuff, and it's often
just forgotten. I'll add a json export so users can save off at some point.

~~~
devdad
A week after my son found out Michael Jackson had died. He loves Michael
Jackson.

\- Dad. Is Michael Jackson dead? \- Yes... (Unsure if this will cause a
meltdown) \- That's OK. \- It is? \- Yep. There's two. Which one is dead? \-
How do you mean? \- The white or the brown one?

~~~
overcast
That's a good kidism! :D

------
dzenos
Building [https://tuiqo.com](https://tuiqo.com) to try and solve a document
versioning problem. We realized that even though we created a new way to do
document version control and avoid "v1.doc, v2.doc, final_final.doc" problem;
people won't switch to it because of lack of options such as formatting tools
or any other pure editor features. We are thinking of possible pivots we could
try out and we obviously don't have a product-market fit.

------
reagent
I built this dead-simple "image enhancing" app
([http://en.hance.me](http://en.hance.me)) to focus in on potentially
embarrassing details in photos. It allows you to specify a zoom area and
create a 4-panel stacked image that progressively "zooms in" on your target
area.

~~~
joshschreuder
Seems like something you could possibly make money off with ads given it's a
pretty popular meme

------
lawrencewu
I created Juicebox, which lets you listen to youtube/soundcloud songs with
other people: [https://www.juicebox.dj/](https://www.juicebox.dj/)

I have made no money off of this. In fact, I've probably paid hundreds in
hosting/domain fees. But I love what I've built so far and use it everyday
with my friends. Please check it out, I'd love to hear any feedback!

~~~
kermittd
This is random but I saw you on reddit, great product!

------
kadirayk
[http://apimockery.com/](http://apimockery.com/) \- API Mocking as a Service

I built it to learn React and brush up my Go skills. I occasionally add new
features.

It makes $0 now, but I plan to earn 10$ a month before my amazon free tier
expires :)

~~~
shime
This is a great idea! Design could use some love, though.

~~~
kadirayk
Thanks for the feedback! The text below annoys a good deal of people as well,
I should add 'improving design' to my big pile of todos :)

------
cozuya
My web adaptation of the social deduction board game Secret Hitler:
[https://secrethitler.io](https://secrethitler.io)

Pretty fun, don't get to do much back end stuff so its a learning process. Its
creative commons so can't make $ off it but the $10/month digital ocean box is
doing fine. About 100 players on at peak and always games going.

~~~
0xcoffee
Looks pretty cool, but is it possible to mute spammers?
[http://i.imgur.com/vwLkukw.png](http://i.imgur.com/vwLkukw.png)

------
albahk
Free OpenStreetMap Data extracts (be kind, it is a rushed POC at the moment)

[http://propdata.io](http://propdata.io)

I have created a free site containing extracts from OpenStreetMap data. Unlike
the metro extracts sites (Geofabrik, Mapzen), my goal is to extract specific
datasets such as buildings, schools, hospitals, fast food restaurants etc from
OSM rather than standard map/gis data.

My overall goal is to make the extracts available, and then to encourage
people who use them and get value to actively update OSM to improve the
quality of the data they are interested in. By doing this, the overall quality
and coverage of data in OSM should (in theory) be improved.

------
preinheimer
Global Ping Statistics -
[https://wondernetwork.com/pings](https://wondernetwork.com/pings) We have
~240 servers world wide, we get them all to ping each other every hour, and
record the results.

We've been generating them for years, they're a pain to store, we've made $0
with it. But I really like the data we're getting. We recently moved a lot of
the legacy data into S3 to save our own backup & restore process (
[https://wonderproxy.com/blog/moving-ping-data-
to-s3/](https://wonderproxy.com/blog/moving-ping-data-to-s3/) )

~~~
iDemonix
What makes them a pain to store? This looks perfect for something like
Graphite.

~~~
preinheimer
Well, we went with the datastore we knew, MySQL. So on the upside we've got
full granularity forever. On the downside we were backing up the full dataset
every night. Plus the large amount of data was slowing pages down (even on
indexed queries).

Now that we've moved the data older than two weeks over to S3, and query with
Athena our site is faster, and we're not treating our backup infrastructure
quite as poorly.

~~~
exikyut
I just did some back-of-the-envelope math.

The biggest ping time I see is just under 4 seconds. With milliseconds, that
translates into a 7-digit string if you pretend the first 4 digits are the
integer part and the last 3 are the fraction. The caveat is that you must
store "42.32" as "0042.032", someone more advanced may be able to suggest a
better system. The maximum 22-bit value is 4194304, which is a tad small. 23
bits is 8388608 - and I suspect you'd consider an 8388 millisecond ping time a
bug. :D

64-bit time is a fad just because it's easier to do multiples of 8 than
bitpack. However, if you use 33-bit time, you can count up to 8589934592,
which is the year 2242.

I see you have 250 servers. Using a single int will only get you up to 255.
Ouch. But using two bytes gives you space for 64000 servers you'll never use.
Wat do?

Well, if you're okay with calculating the avg and mdev in realtime, that's
(23*2)+33 (min+max+date), which works out to 79 bytes. So you could prefix _9_
bytes for the server ID, which gives you 512 servers.

So that's 9+23+23+33=88 bytes per ID.

At 88 bytes per ID, one year's worth of records for 250 servers is 192720000,
or 183MB per year.

This is not a particularly fancy approach, and is likely inefficient in many
ways. But it's definitely doable, both for long-term (full-
resolution/granularity) archival and realtime querying. You could make a
superfast server in Go that accepted simple queries and handled the on-disk
format. You could export the Go server over the Web directly (Go is pretty
concurrent, but requires 8K per goroutine, which adds if you have eg 10ks of
connections...) or use a simple/low-level protocol from your existing Web
framework.

------
jesses
[https://gigalixir.com](https://gigalixir.com) After falling in love with
Elixir, Phoenix, Ecto, etc I built this to help increase Elixir adoption by
solving the biggest pain point I saw: deploying.

~~~
samcodes
This is great! I've looked for exactly this in the past.

------
atomashpolskiy
Yes, I've developed a full-featured BitTorrent library in Java:
[https://github.com/atomashpolskiy/bt/blob/master/README.md#-...](https://github.com/atomashpolskiy/bt/blob/master/README.md#----bt)
. It was very warmly received by HN folks

It was VERY surprising for me to find out that one of the most popular
programming languages offers little variety in terms of BT libs/clients. For a
long time, if one needed advanced options like DHT or protocol encryption, his
only choice would be jlibtorrent (JNI wrapper for the well-known C++ library).
Well, not anymore :)

~~~
superasn
This is very cool. Being a Java lib I guess it can be compiled directly inside
Android apps too(?) which is definitely a very big plus!

~~~
atomashpolskiy
I haven't checked myself yet, but probably yes, if a proper Android SDK with
Java 8 de-sugaring support is used.

------
dumbfounder
Twicsy (Twitter picture search) still gets around 1.5 million visitors per
month, but nets no money. But I wouldn't call it sheer joy though, maybe sheer
stubbornness?

[http://twicsy.com](http://twicsy.com)

~~~
Insanity
Looks cool though! ;-) What are the costs associated with that if you don't
mind me asking?

~~~
dumbfounder
Servers are about $1200 per month. (I have about 12tb of SSD on 5 servers).
Then there are some misc costs (business costs) that are maybe $200/month.

~~~
Tajnymag
Wow, that's rather a lot of money for a non-profit project :-o

~~~
Insanity
Indeed, damn. That is a lot of money to spend each month

------
kvz
I'm writing a bot for cryptotrading without having the proper knowledge for
something like that. Learning as I go and I expect to lose some money on this
(certainly won't give it a budget to manage that I can't afford to lose), but
I'm having a ton of fun entertaining the fantasy that I could 'game the
system' with my bot

~~~
NicoJuicy
EMA sounds familiar. I'm exactly in the same position with dot net as
programming language. I'm interested in working together , i know other
programming languages also

------
mimming
[http://dinopacks.com](http://dinopacks.com)

I fill out those 'other comments' on order forms with a request for a dinosaur
drawing.

------
joelennon
[https://programmingpodcasts.com](https://programmingpodcasts.com) \- it's a
directory of software dev and related podcasts. Haven't ruled out monetising
it and to be honest maintenance is almost zero as it runs on autopilot. I'm
it's biggest user, use it everyday.

~~~
j_s
Have you considered tracking the various programming live-streamers across all
the different services?

------
jetti
All of my Elixir open source projects:

    
    
      * Plsm - https://github.com/jhartwell/Plsm - which is an Ecto model generator based on existing schemas
    
      * Taex - https://github.com/jhartwell/Taex - A technical Analysis library for Elixir. 
    
    

I'm also in the process of writing a GDAX
([https://gdax.com](https://gdax.com)) Elixir library but won't open source
that until it is more complete. I'm using that and Taex in a cryptocurrency
algo trading platform I'm developing.

------
CiPHPerCoder
Virtually everything in the paragonie namespace on Packagist generates zero
revenue, but we built and maintain them because we want to make the PHP
ecosystem more secure by default.

[https://packagist.org/packages/paragonie](https://packagist.org/packages/paragonie)

------
monkey_slap
Working on a GitHub iOS app to make managing GitHub projects easier. Fun part
is now that it's shipped I'm using it to manage itself.

[https://github.com/rnystrom/Freetime](https://github.com/rnystrom/Freetime)

Turning this into more of a social experiment now, seeing where he community
wants to take this. Publishing download reports and stuff.

Even made a landing page.

[http://freetime-app.com/](http://freetime-app.com/)

------
epx
Morse code player: [https://epxx.co/morse](https://epxx.co/morse)

Koch method to learn Morse:
[https://epxx.co/morse/koch.html](https://epxx.co/morse/koch.html)

~~~
audiometry
nice. I tried to use another (pay) site's koch method, but the website worked
terribly. The "tech support" was awful, so I abandoned the effort.

------
edhelas
Movim, a social network project built on XMPP
[https://movim.eu/](https://movim.eu/). I'm working on it for 9 years already
and starting to have a nice little community using it daily.

I'm really enjoying developing Movim on my free time because I'm still
motivated to show the world that we can have decent social-networks and IM
solutions by using existing standard protocols (and not proprietary silos like
today).

------
jrm2k6
I started working on iparklikeadumbass.com. The idea is for me to upload
pictures of people parking like idiots, blur the license plate and just have
it out there. I know I wont make any money of it but it is a good way of
preventing road/parking raging.

~~~
brett40324
You get my vote for most humorous! I'll be checking that url again one day,
and hopefully there's dumbass parking photos up.

~~~
jrm2k6
Will probably create a Show HN thread as it would definitely be a hit.

------
laktak
I started [http://hjson.org](http://hjson.org) as a JSON for humans interface
but I constantly run into the "I love it but I'll wait until it's used by more
people" problem.

~~~
thasaleni
I see myself using this

------
GenKali
NextTrain: [https://www.nextrain.co.za](https://www.nextrain.co.za)

We have a fledgling train system in the Gauteng area of South Africa (this
area includes Johannesburg and Pretoria). However, the only way to see train
schedules is via a PDF (2MB) buried deep on their website.

This was a quick weekend hack to show when the next train is for each of the
stations, and some additional info.

~~~
thasaleni
Is this for the GauTrain? or normal MetroRail service?

~~~
GenKali
GauTrain only

------
alexanderson
Https://github.com/Thorium-sim/thorium - Starship simulator controls. Think
Bridge Simulators (like Artemis) meet D&D. The controls facilitate doing space
missions, where one participant is a game master and the others take various
roles on the ship.

I love working on the controls, and I’m learning a lot too. I’m going to start
taking donations soon, but don’t plan on making a ton of money.

------
dhpiggott
I built [https://www.liquidityapp.com/](https://www.liquidityapp.com/) over
the summer of 2015: "Liquidity is a smartphone based currency built for
Monopoly and all board and tabletop games.", and I actively maintain it. I
have enhancement ideas too, but I barely have any time to put into it these
days so it is primarily just maintenance.

It's one part Android client and one part Scala backend (though there's some
Scala in the client too). While I'm fairly pleased with the UX and UI I was
able to create (given that I really don't consider them my speciality), the
backend is the bit that keeps my interest now. That uses Akka, Akka
Persistence (i.e. it's event sourced), and Akka HTTP among other things. The
clients communicate with it via websockets.

The details aren't exposed to users but it uses public key authentication so
as to not burden users with passwords/PINs. Each app generates a keypair when
first used, and QR codes are used to make changing account ownership simple.

~~~
vegasje
This is a really cool idea. Nice job!

------
kaivi
I'm hoarding profile data diffs from a well known social network. Been
crawling every single user for the past 2 years and saving the changes. Had to
stop doing it last month, after storage costs became too much.

~~~
SIRHAMY
Woah, do you have an end goal with this. Willing to let people get their hands
on it?

~~~
kaivi
I'd like to set it up as a subscription service like Domaintools. I'm also
crawling and storing user's comments, friends, posts and links to media
published in other groups.

It will make a great tool for profiling a person, but I'm not sure on how
(il)legal it will be.

------
dkarp
I made and maintain
[https://transparentmetric.com/](https://transparentmetric.com/)

I find it fascinating watching the changes made to news articles over time. It
lets you get into the mind of the various journalists and editors at different
news organisations and see how they react to things. I just wish I had more
time to develop it further.

------
louisstow
[https://walloftext.co](https://walloftext.co)

I genuinely find it useful for note-taking and organising things.

------
bcruddy
[https://github.com/bcruddy/taco](https://github.com/bcruddy/taco) \- a
create-react-app + redux + express boilerplate. It currently grabs pricing
data for BTC, ETH, and LTC and I mostly put it together for myself about a
month ago.

[https://github.com/bcruddy/GramLikeCam](https://github.com/bcruddy/GramLikeCam)
\- my Panthers' fan friends seem to enjoy it. Initially I wanted to write a
bot that would grab new instagram posts from Cam Newton and translate the
weird characters he uses into plain english and post it as the first comment
but ended up going pretty much the opposite direction.

[https://github.com/bcruddy/tumbo](https://github.com/bcruddy/tumbo) \- a very
unpolished ascii video chat to play with websockets and string compression,
I'll occasionally check out the website and see someone live streaming a day
in the office.

------
spondyl
I'm building a wiki for a little known South Korean mobile game I enjoy and
it's fun both learning how to manage and build a Mediawiki install.

It's also a great excuse to suck up all the lore and properly analyse
character conversations and what not!

Now I just gotta see if I can get some official looking art renders authorised
for release from the devs since a press kit was never released

------
amorphic
I co-founded and run a makerspace called SparkCC
([http://sparkcc.org](http://sparkcc.org)).

It's not-for-profit but I've met lots of amazing people. I've been able to use
my skills and knowledge to help many of them and many of them have used their
skills and knowledge to help me. It's fantastic...:)

------
guaka
Hitchhiking guide [http://hitchwiki.org](http://hitchwiki.org) dumpster diving
guide [http://trashwiki.org](http://trashwiki.org) social network
[https://www.trustroots.org](https://www.trustroots.org)

~~~
literallycancer
Hitchwiki is very useful. There's been something wrong with downloading the
point of interest lately though (timeouts with large datasets like the one for
Germany).

------
raybb
I built a tool to schedule Gmail messages to be sent later but without any 3rd
party, messy spreadsheets, or self hosting.

I just did it for fun and because I wanted a tool like it.

[https://github.com/RayBB/easy-gmail-
scheduler/](https://github.com/RayBB/easy-gmail-scheduler/)

------
OkGoDoIt
I built an automated prank call system called Insultron a few years ago. You
simply send a text message to 765-444-4442 and it will prank call your chosen
friend with some randomly generated ridiculous insults. At one point a few
years ago I used it on Steve Wozniak since he was a big fan of prank calling
back in the day (pro tip for contacting Woz: his personal phone number is in
his autobiography, but in order to get through you have to have a caller ID
that’s in the same area code.)

It used to cost me under five dollars a month using Twilio but its usage has
taken off dramatically (completely organically) and now it cost me closer to
$50 a month but I keep paying it because it’s fun.

I also built and ran an implementation of Cat Facts several years ago until
that was shut down by my provider because people are abusing it too much.

------
chaostheory
Late to the game again =/

I'm working on [https://theymadethat.com](https://theymadethat.com) It's an
IMDB for everything, not just movies. It does show you who built what but it
does more: theymadethat can show you what they used to build it, what those
things are made of (parts, ...), their evolutionary history, who they worked
with, and so on

I can't say that I'm building it out of sheer joy; it's more out of
obligation. There are so many people who's contributions to mankind should
never be forgotten. Wikipedia is great (and I see it being complimentary to
theymadethat in the long term), but we need something more. I could be wrong
but I strongly feel that theymadethat is the answer.

~~~
tenaciousDaniel
This is super interesting to read through, and was very happy to see the
Pentax K1000 mentioned! That was my first camera and I used it all the time
during my teenage years. The thing was a beast, you could own the same one for
30 years and it would never die on you.

~~~
chaostheory
Thanks man - Pentax K1000's entry is actually a stub that needs work; still -
glad you liked it =)

This is a slightly better entry in terms of cameras

[https://www.theymadethat.com/organizations/slx/polaroid-
corp...](https://www.theymadethat.com/organizations/slx/polaroid-corporation)

On a related note, if you happen to know anyone related to the the K1000's
design and manufacture, feel free to add it

------
RomanPushkin
[http://libretaxi.org](http://libretaxi.org) libre uber alternative, lot of
fun, users, traction, no money

------
donohoe
[https://article.rocks](https://article.rocks)

This is my swipable curated news feed. I only tested it on my iPhone 6,
bookmarked to Homescreen. Outside of that your experience might vary.

I've been redoing it every few months for the past 3 or 4 years. At one point
it included summation text and opened inline AMP links for articles that had
them.

It's an automated curation of content I like and includes some basic sentiment
analysis and popularity metrics.

The content is interspersed with a custom ad template just for fun. When there
is enough content it includes mediative looping gifs/video.

It scrapes content, rewrites headlines, throws images through random filters
to good/bad/artful effect.

This is my entire morning subway commute.

(Feedback always welcome)

------
sunilkumarc
I have been developing side projects for fun since my Engineering days(from
past 6 years). Below are the ones worth showing:

1\. Track Courier - This was developed to learn the tech-stack Node.js +
Backbone.js + PostgreSQL ([https://github.com/sunilkumarc/track-
courier](https://github.com/sunilkumarc/track-courier))

2\. Form Filler - This was developed to solve my own problem of having to type
common fields like email id, username etc again and again on different web
pages ([https://github.com/sunilkumarc/form-
filler](https://github.com/sunilkumarc/form-filler))

3\. Subtitle Corrector - This is a linux command line utility to correct
subtitle files. Using this one can adjust the entire file by +x or -x seconds
([https://github.com/sunilkumarc/subtitle-
corrector](https://github.com/sunilkumarc/subtitle-corrector))

4\. 100 - This is a project I started to learn to solve Algorithms and DS
problems for my interview preparations. The plan was to solve at least 1
problem everyday for 100 days. But I couldn't do it everyday. Still whenever I
solve a problem I put it in this repository
([https://github.com/sunilkumarc/100](https://github.com/sunilkumarc/100))

5\. Desktop Commentary - This is again a linux utility which shows Cricket
scores every 10 seconds on your desktop as a Notification Bubble. The problem
I was trying to solve here was to avoid going to Espncricinfo website every
now and then to check scores when a match is going on
([https://github.com/sunilkumarc/desktop-
commentary](https://github.com/sunilkumarc/desktop-commentary))

6\. Alarm Manager - This is one more linux utility to set multiple alarms (up
to 5) on your linux machine ([https://github.com/sunilkumarc/alarm-
manager](https://github.com/sunilkumarc/alarm-manager))

------
vitomd
I couldn´t find a good online site to discover new nonfiction books based on
selected great quotes so I made
[http://arandomquote.com](http://arandomquote.com)

Another project is gDriveSync.js: Javascript wrapper library for Google Drive
API v3. You can list, save, read documents just using html and js
[https://github.com/vitogit/gDriveSync.js](https://github.com/vitogit/gDriveSync.js)

Another one Sorter:
[https://github.com/vitogit/sorter](https://github.com/vitogit/sorter) is a
webapp to organize ideas, tasks and information using bullet points and
hashtags.

------
bradbeattie
I'm working on collating as many sources of Canadian federal data into a
single relational database, and exposing that data via a public API.

[https://api.iscanadafair.ca/](https://api.iscanadafair.ca/)

Given the sources of this data, I'm pretty sure I'm not even allowed to profit
off of this. Not really a problem as I'd be doing this in my spare time
anyway.

The data-visualization side of it (e.g. [https://iscanadafair.ca/data-
visualization/example-usage/](https://iscanadafair.ca/data-
visualization/example-usage/)) isn't my strong-suit, but it's fun to muck
around in regardless.

~~~
vijayr
I did something similar on a much smaller scale for census, bea etc (only the
DB part).

Here in the US, federal gov data (census, bea, bls etc) can be used in
commercial products as far as I know. Might be the same in Canada, worth
looking into?

Great idea

~~~
bradbeattie
Yeah, I don't recall where I saw something that suggested fair use.
[https://lop.parl.ca/ImportantNotices-e.html#Copyrights](https://lop.parl.ca/ImportantNotices-e.html#Copyrights)
doesn't speak directly to that issue, but it's probably easier to just cite my
sources and not bother with the revenue side of things. It's more important to
me that this data be freely and easily available than it is for me to turn any
kind of meagre profit.

------
kyletns
[https://www.groupmuse.com](https://www.groupmuse.com) now envelopes my entire
life :) We have starting making a bit of money, finally, but not much and it
sure ain't why we've been at it for 5 years!

~~~
sbuccini
I love Groupmuse! Great idea, and execution. If you're in the Bay Area I'd
love to buy you a coffee/beer!

------
lcall
I created this system which I've mentioned before (AGPL):

[http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org)

...because it tracks all my thoughts, plans, & resulting to-dos, and I mark
them off when done ("archived") in a few keystrokes. Then there is a simple
feature for displaying the ~"journal" for a date range which defaults to
starting yesterday at midnight: everything created or archived in that time is
shown, so I've basically stopped keeping track in any other way, of what I
have done, as I can always look it up.

I used to use org-mode, "inspiration" (an old windows program for collapsible
outlines and mind maps), and various text editors, but this is the most
efficient and flexible I have found. In my use, it is like a textual, ever-
expanding comprehensive mind map that is highly efficient to use from the
keyboard, uses postgresql, and can handle large amounts of data, having the
same thing linked in more than one place, etc etc, so you can organize all
possible stuff in arbitrary ways to suit yourself: I tend to use a few
hierarchies and some frequent categories go in multiple places, for
convenience. I use it to keep lists of gift ideas, calendar, personal journal,
and it just gets the job done with the lowest impedance of anything i have
tried or heard of. It has an auto "journal-generation" feature, some finicky
import/export features to html or to/from text, searching, somewhat limited
file storage, and more.

It has no mouse or mobile support yet, but it is the best thing I've found for
any kind of note-taking (I'm the author). It needs simpler installation and
added features but is stable and works really well, really efficient once you
get familiar, and everything is on the screen. I hope to add anki-like
features in the future. Contributions welcome. I'm told it needs an
introductory screencast, which I plan to put up eventually, but for now there
is a tutorial at the web site, on which feedback is welcome.

The latest code is in github, where I am working (very slowly) on an
infrastructure for linking or exchanging info between instances.

------
Lerc
Sheer joy is an interesting term. I like making things but I don't think that
is my primary motivater for _what_ I make.

Most of my free stuff is because I think the things should exist and they are
things that shouldn't have to be paid for.

Some things are just plain geek fun

[https://github.com/Lerc/stackie](https://github.com/Lerc/stackie) \- Makes
textures using a very compact stack machine language

[https://github.com/Lerc/kwak-8](https://github.com/Lerc/kwak-8) \- Emulator
for an 8-bit computer that never existed

Some things I wanted to have exist

[https://github.com/Lerc/smallcalc](https://github.com/Lerc/smallcalc) \- A
compact pop-up calculator for the Cinnamon Desktop

[https://github.com/Lerc/plops](https://github.com/Lerc/plops) \- (old) A
lightweight Desktop widget engine that I made when I developing for 256-512mb
boxes/

[https://github.com/Lerc/whio](https://github.com/Lerc/whio) \- A Javascript
canvas rendering lib for beginner programmers using Globaly avalilable
functions + mediaWiki plugin to run in a worker.

[http://fingswotidun.com/code](http://fingswotidun.com/code) \- A wiki usisng
the plugin from the entry above. Has some introduction to programming
javasctipt tutorials.

And the mad project that I come back to every couple of years to push a bit
further along.

[https://github.com/Lerc/notanos](https://github.com/Lerc/notanos) \- A
html/js login deskop for Linux.

And a lot of games.

Here's a silly one
[http://screamingduck.com/Lerc/LD13.html](http://screamingduck.com/Lerc/LD13.html)

Here's a really hard one
[http://www.screamingduck.com/Lerc/LD14.html](http://www.screamingduck.com/Lerc/LD14.html)

And here's one that might give your browser a hernia
[http://fingswotidun.com/ld21/](http://fingswotidun.com/ld21/)

------
dunstad
A program that allows you to control robots in Minecraft from a web browser:
[https://github.com/dunstad/roboserver](https://github.com/dunstad/roboserver)

~~~
bpchaps
Super cool!

I wrote something that converts png files to OpenComputer 3dprint .3dm files.
Next time I play, I'll try to combine your code with my own for easy
portraiting :).

------
khedoros1
That's...everything that I program that isn't part of my job. A near-universal
trait of my hobby projects is that they're basically things that I don't think
I could sell. The two that I've put the most time into over the years are an
NES emulator and an attempted reimplementation of the Ultima Underworld game
engine.

There are also things like a C++ port of some Python code to control a PWM-
generating chip (inside the skeletal codebase that will eventually control a
quadrupedal robot), and a collection of utilities that mostly have to do with
things related to DOS-era games.

------
gbl08ma
I have a bit of a obsession with the Lisbon Metro, even though I don't use it
very often. I started by building this:

[https://github.com/gbl08ma/disturbancesmlx](https://github.com/gbl08ma/disturbancesmlx)

This started as more of a statistics page for the service interruptions
published by the Metro on their website, which I scrape. The slight tongue-in-
cheekiness of my website, which opens up with a large text saying something
like "XX days since the last disturbance", where XX is usually a single-digit
number, made it become mildly popular (at least in terms of what I'm used to).

This particular subway system doesn't operate on a fixed schedule and doesn't
show the ETA for the next train outside of the platforms nor on any app or
website. (Google thinks there's a schedule, but they've been fooled.) They
also don't publish usage stats for each station, which would be of great
interest to everyone who likes daydreaming of expansions, network
reorganization and the like. Furthermore, I read and heard multiple reports of
delays and interruptions that never made their way to the website. So I
decided to build a Android app to unobtrusively crowd-source data and
communicate the service status back to the users...

[https://github.com/gbl08ma/underlx](https://github.com/gbl08ma/underlx)

...and the very ambitious goal is to, one day, be able to calculate train
positions and ETAs based on real-time data reported by the smartphones of
people riding the subway. Pretty much "Waze for the Lisbon Metro".

Yeah, I've put months of work into this and there's absolutely no business
plan; it perpetually feels 5% complete. But it's been fun putting together my
second Android app, playing around with Postgres (after many years using
MySQL), designing the REST API and writing the server in Go. I plan to use
this big project as my sandbox for experimenting with machine learning and
other AI techniques, as well as data analytics and visualization. There's
already a small but extremely interested group of users, which really
motivates me to keep working on this.

------
edumucelli
[http://eazy.bike/](http://eazy.bike/) \- Always find a bicycle or empty slots
on bikesharing systems

Eazy.bike picks best bicycle stations considering real-time information of how
many bicycles and free bicycle stands are available in more than 400 cities in
48 countries. Behind it uses machine-learning to predict what will be the
availability of empty slots so that you can maximize the probability to find a
place to park your bicycle.

It took me a huge work to write the whole stuff, API, Android, iPhone and web
application, but I really like it.

------
typpo
I built this 3d visualization of the upcoming Perseids meteor shower!

[https://www.meteorshowers.org/view/Perseids](https://www.meteorshowers.org/view/Perseids)

~~~
tenaciousDaniel
wow, very impressive! do you use a public api for the data?

~~~
typpo
Thanks! The data is publicly available at
[http://cams.seti.org/](http://cams.seti.org/)

------
orblivion
Host Wikipedia on Sandstorm.io:

[https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/5uh349d0kky2zp5whrh2znahn27gwh...](https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/5uh349d0kky2zp5whrh2znahn27gwha876xze3864n0fu9e5220h)

Kiwix itself is not my project, I just packaged it for Sandstorm. I saw
Sandstorm as a great potential tool for the off-the-grid, mesh networking, etc
world. Being able to easily host a local copy of Wikipedia was one missing
piece. I hope to work on the next piece soon.

(Kixix also supports Project Gutenberg, Stack Overflow, Ted Talks, and much
more)

------
jasoninprivate
I started a blog (this week) focusing on how retail investors can get exposure
to startups and other private companies, which are normally reserved for VC
and institutional investors.

The ultimate goal is how can we, as startup employees and enthusiasts manage
our own risk? Since we are heavily exposed to risk in ways other players in
this space aren't (because we work for one company at a time, and they invest
in many).

Not sure where it's going to take me yet.

[https://jasoninprivate.com](https://jasoninprivate.com)

------
LukeB42
1\. [http://index.psybernetics.org](http://index.psybernetics.org) A news
archival service. Built on a Golang implementation of another project.
Intending to open source the backend once it's mature. It's been running in
production for around a year but the underlying httpd now either needs
vendoring or the code sat on top of it needs updating.

2\. [https://github.com/lukeb42/emissary](https://github.com/lukeb42/emissary)
The first news archival service I wrote. Went through a couple of iterations.
Not too happy with the multi-process model under the hood though.

3\. [http://github.com/lukeb42/psyrcd](http://github.com/lukeb42/psyrcd) This
has been running in production for a couple of years. The scripting system was
recently overhauled and we're using it instead of Consul or NATS for message
bussing and service discovery at work (I technically get paid to make sure
this is production-quality but it's not consuming time at the moment). It'd be
nice to use the plugin system to implement a MUD as a channel mode that
generated the world via numpy-based LSTM network.

4\.
[https://github.com/psybernetics/synchrony](https://github.com/psybernetics/synchrony)
A peer-to-peer caching proxy. Currently working towards a C implementation of
this before dedicating time to the other projects in this post.

------
Willfire19
I've spent about a year building out AmaranTime
([http://store.steampowered.com/app/566800/AmaranTime/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/566800/AmaranTime/)),
mostly working on movement mechanics. I actually just made a breakthrough, so
soon players will be able to run in place to move without having to press and
hold a button. While it is for sale, I haven't made much money. Besides, I do
this for fun!

------
abhisuri97
A chrome extension to help visually impaired individuals see images
[http://abhinavsuri.com/aat](http://abhinavsuri.com/aat)

------
showhndaily
[https://twitter.com/showhndaily](https://twitter.com/showhndaily)

Created a simple Twitter bot back in 2013 that auto-tweets every post marked
"Show HN". Updated to HN API (Firebase) in 2014 or 2015.

Small claim to fame: Had a daily email newsletter for the first year or so.
Ryan Hoover (Product Hunt) was on my initial subscriber list, before PH
launched. Now if only I had just _pivoted_ to feature new wow-ness for the
world PH-style, hmmmm ...

------
eejdoowad
I've been building a keybinding Chrome extension like Vimium for about half a
year now. It started when I struggled to add a feature to Vimium and figured I
could do it better myself.

From my biased perspective, my extension is better. User uptake has been
negligible, but I think the lessons I've learned have made it worth the time
invested.

[https://github.com/lusakasa/saka-key](https://github.com/lusakasa/saka-key)

------
rmb81
I built an interpreter for the pseudocode language my uni uses to introduce
programming. It´s in Spanish, you can give it a try here:

[https://pl-lang.github.io/playground/](https://pl-lang.github.io/playground/)

There´s an example program here:

[https://github.com/pl-lang/jsplint](https://github.com/pl-lang/jsplint)

My goal is to help students who might be struggling with the assignments.

------
armis
Many small and bigger adventures like:

[https://github.com/ziogas/cmdwrap](https://github.com/ziogas/cmdwrap) \-
Command line/shell wrapper to a web interface. Basically forward any shell
command to a nodejs-bootstrap powered web input and track its output.

[https://github.com/ziogas/easyembed](https://github.com/ziogas/easyembed) \-
Micro framework optimized for embedding small independent apps into legacy php
systems.

[https://github.com/ziogas/PHP-Redis-
implementation](https://github.com/ziogas/PHP-Redis-implementation) \- Php
redis wrapper focused into simplicity with almost zero abstractions and
future-proof.

[https://github.com/ziogas/pomodoro-must](https://github.com/ziogas/pomodoro-
must) \- Google Chrome extension helping you to stay in pomodoro mode.

[https://www.statsglitch.com/](https://www.statsglitch.com/) \- Receive
notifications from Google Analytics whenever happened statistically
significant spike or drop in your traffic.

------
thexa4
I work on Empires Mod, a 10 year old real time strategy and first person
shooter hybrid. It's playable for free and still has an active playerbase.
It's very satisfying to fix bugs that have been around for more than 5 years.

We're currently looking for someone that can do UX design, if you're
interested in making an impact on a live game send me a message.

[https://empiresmod.com](https://empiresmod.com)

------
nitramm
I was surprised how many different types of prime numbers exist. So I am
building - [https://prime-numbers.info](https://prime-numbers.info) \- to find
out which one belongs to most of them. Current winner is 5 - [https://prime-
numbers.info/number/5](https://prime-numbers.info/number/5) \- but still lot
of types is missing.

~~~
StefanKovachev
I'm inlove with primes... Great work!!

------
kapuru
Created Unfollow ([https://www.unfollow.io](https://www.unfollow.io)) because
I wanted to know who unfollowed me on Twitch. Not a noble reason. But now that
I don't stream anymore I just do it because it's so much fun and I don't care
about unfollowers anymore. Lots of people use it which motivates me. It's
free, but I'm looking for monetization strategies.

------
rsync
"Oh By"

[https://0x.co](https://0x.co)

I continue to believe this is a useful tool even though we've sold fewer than
100 of them ...

------
jonberk218
This is probably going to be buried but YES, my weekly newsletter The Random
Roundup([https://tinyletter.com/randomroundup](https://tinyletter.com/randomroundup))
Granted, down the line I may be able to leverage the audience for something
but right now sharing the gems I find while hitch hiking the internet is so
awesome I'd probably even pay to do it.

------
acabal
I'm working on Standard Ebooks
([https://standardebooks.org](https://standardebooks.org)) in my spare time.
Not only is it not-for-profit but the work is released under CC0 too, where
applicable.

We got on HN a month or two ago--people really seemed to like the project and
we got a lot of great new contributors. If anyone else is interested in
contributing, drop me a line :)

------
thsealienbstrds
I've been working on `moncat`, a tool that concatenates e-mails.

It's very 'Unix-y' in the sense that it's supposed to do this and only this.

I created it because I wanted to have a way to make notes without being
dependent on apps. With moncat, I can use any e-mail client to incrementally
create larger text files.

Currently, I'm using it to write a journal in Markdown that is automatically
converted to HTML. How that works: I e-mail journal entries to myself, put
them in a mailbox folder, and periodically compile the journal using a
cronjob.

moncat accepts some basic commands that you can put in the subject line of the
e-mail. For example, you can reorder items to be concatenated. It also handles
attachments and nested folders.

...

Yeah.. so there is no documentation and the code is pretty shit, since I'm the
only one using it. The upside is that the code is also pretty small (around
350 LOC Python in total).

So, just in case anyone is looking for a tool like this... here you go! ;)

[https://www.pastery.net/xysbyq+juprcp/#xysbyq](https://www.pastery.net/xysbyq+juprcp/#xysbyq)

~~~
koliber
Ha! I love it. I just recently created a tool for personal use that does
something similar to this.

I use Evernote notes with bullet lists as my TODO list. I created a tool that
takes each line of a received email and adds it to my TODO list at the top. It
is very convenient. My wife can email me things that need to get done!

~~~
thsealienbstrds
Nice! I like that basically now you have an e-mail interface to Evernote. What
I like about that is that you get all operating systems for free and crazy
robustness in terms of forwards compatibility (at least, on the client-side).

------
RealityNow
I'm at a point where money doesn't matter to me anymore except in the sense of
retirement. I'm not rich by any means, I'd just rather live a life working on
the most important problems in life, which these days I believe are mostly
political/economic.

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

~~~
zapperdapper
Keep it going - this is important work.

p.s. South Korea does not sound like a nice place!!!

------
makapuf
I created the bitbox console, a DIY console for which I and a few others
develop random games, which is starting to get some traction. The console is
based on baremetal ARM cortex m micro. And then I ported a few 8bit emulators.
Edit: added url
[http://github.com/makapuf/bitbox](http://github.com/makapuf/bitbox)

------
msquitieri
I created a site as a poetry project that generates random poems from
sentences in Craigslist Missed Connections. Some of the poems are actually
really poignant and funny.

[https://craigslistpoetry.com](https://craigslistpoetry.com)

[https://twitter.com/craigslistpoems](https://twitter.com/craigslistpoems)

~~~
tortoise_face
I. Love. This. It's genuine emotional revelations mixed with mundanity mixed
with outrageous sexual deviancy.

~~~
msquitieri
Haha thanks!!

------
brian-armstrong
I've been working to fill what I see as a gap in free software. My library
encodes data into sound and works cross-platform. As far as I can tell it may
be the most robust, cross-platform freely licensed library that does this,
though there is still much I need to improve on

[https://github.com/quiet](https://github.com/quiet)

------
JulianLoehr
"HID Wiimote" [0] a Windows device driver for the Nintendo Wii Remote & Wii U
Pro Controller. Started as my Bachelor's thesis and am still working on it
every now and then.

[0] [https://www.julianloehr.de/educational-work/hid-
wiimote/](https://www.julianloehr.de/educational-work/hid-wiimote/)

------
enoch_r
[https://agh.io/about](https://agh.io/about) / TicTag is a passive time
tracking tool that randomly samples your time to get a statistically accurate
picture of your life. It's like RescueTime except that randomness allows it to
be for _everything_ , offline and on.

For example, this is how much time I spend reading:

[https://jds.objects-us-
west-1.dream.io/screenshots/2017-08-1...](https://jds.objects-us-
west-1.dream.io/screenshots/2017-08-10_15.05.51.png)

This is how much time I spend riding my bike:

[https://jds.objects-us-
west-1.dream.io/screenshots/2017-08-1...](https://jds.objects-us-
west-1.dream.io/screenshots/2017-08-10_15.09.50.png)

(How it works: every 45 minutes, on average, it'll send you a slack message.
You respond with tags for what you were doing _right at that moment_ , like
"job dev" or "bike" and it compiles your responses.)

------
sideshowb
[http://www.tropic.org.uk/~crispin/quantum/](http://www.tropic.org.uk/~crispin/quantum/)

Upside: it's got a quantum physics game engine, and can teach you quantum
mechanics

Downside: HN will continue to tear me apart for making them download a JAR
file but you can grab the source and compile it yourself if you like

~~~
camtarn
Looks cool.

I'd love to be able to see more screenshots of the game - at the moment
they're faded out and placed in the background, and when you click them you
end up just downloading the game itself.

I actually don't mind the JAR file thing ;) but I'm unlikely to download and
try it without knowing a bit more about the game concept.

~~~
sideshowb
There are more screenshots here [http://www.indiedb.com/games/quantum-marble-
maze](http://www.indiedb.com/games/quantum-marble-maze)

Blog describing the physics here
[https://linkingideasblog.wordpress.com/2016/04/25/learning-q...](https://linkingideasblog.wordpress.com/2016/04/25/learning-
quantum-mechanics-the-easy-way/)

I'd hope the title explains the concept fairly concisely. It's a marble maze
type game i.e. guide a marble towards a goal, stay out of traps. But the
marble is quantum which means it looks more like a cloud and behaves nothing
like a marble. This led to the levels looking less, well, maze-like than I'd
hoped, but you've got to run with what you got, so I started bringing features
into gameplay that wouldn't exist in a marble maze e.g. trying to fulfill
multiple goals at once by getting orbits into a certain shape.

One thing you can say about my side projects is that they have been 100% out
of touch with commercial reality (excepting a rock climbing website from the
late 90s that made me a few k before I retired it)! I thought initially that
some game studio might want to put money into developing Quantum Marble Maze
beyond proof of concept into something more, but I guess either nobody has
heard of it, because my promotion or delivery is somewhat lacking, or they're
not _that_ interested in something so experimental. Hell, even after open
sourcing it I haven't had anybody contribute. According to the server logs
only about 1000 people have even played QMM, and 10 people finished, which
makes it considerably more niche than I had hoped for a project which tries to
explain a truth "far more marvellous ... than any artists of the past
imagined". Good thing I enjoyed the project for its own sake :)

------
aroberge
[http://reeborg.ca/reeborg.html](http://reeborg.ca/reeborg.html) is a site to
learn programming (using either Python or Javascript).

However, unlike other similar sites, the focus is equally on making it easy
for students to use AND making it easy for teachers/mentors to use, adapt and
create their own learning material. To this end, I am currently writing an
online book as a "Teacher's Guide":

[https://aroberge.gitbooks.io/reeborg-s-world-advanced-
world-...](https://aroberge.gitbooks.io/reeborg-s-world-advanced-world-
creation/content/)

This is a project that started out 13 years ago as a free desktop application
([http://rur-ple.sourceforge.net/](http://rur-ple.sourceforge.net/)) and which
I have been working, on and off, during all that time just for the joy of it
and knowing that people have found it useful.

------
Usu
[https://gitnotifier.io](https://gitnotifier.io)

I created it because I was annoyed with the lack of notifications provided by
GitHub for some events like new people following you or starring/forking your
projects. A lot of people are now using it and that makes me happy even though
I'm losing money by keeping it online.

------
mclemme
Built a few things to teach myself new stuff, the ones that are still online
are:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bitmasch.b...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bitmasch.braintiles)
\- Wanted to learn a cross platform app framework. Built a simple game that
would help my niece get better at basic addition, subtraction, multiplication
and division. Made with Apache Cordova. She only played it a few times, but
her dad (my brother) ended up getting hooked on it for a while, beating other
people's high score with 50-100 points every time someone beat his highscore.

[http://p2pool.jir.dk](http://p2pool.jir.dk) \- Wanted to get some experience
in building a crawler and was interested in p2pool cryptocurrency mining at
the time, so I built a p2pool crawler. The site does have adsense, but it
doesn't really make any money.

------
stefantheard
[http://www.overseer.tv](http://www.overseer.tv)

I built a show tracker just for me (it's not nearly where I want it to be, so
I don't share it anywhere, eg. currently my show database is out of date I
need to see what broke my cron tonight. no ssl cert, no optimization at all I
don't even know if my js is minified tbh, etc).

I am the only active user
[http://www.overseer.tv/user/smt](http://www.overseer.tv/user/smt) and I built
this because I watch a shit ton of shows and I often forget when premieres
come, or what episode I left off on. My site is basically one click to mark a
show/season/episode "watched" and I have a calendar and upcoming section,
which is all I wanted from many other sites I tried before creating my own.

I host this on an EC2 instance for 29$ a month, and my own usage alone makes
it worth it to me haha.

~~~
MikeKusold
Have you heard of [https://trakt.tv/](https://trakt.tv/) before? It seems to
have similar functionality.

~~~
stefantheard
No I hadn't but looking at it, this is essentially what I wanted. Really wish
I had found this before I built overseer lol. That's a great looking site,
I'll give it a try.

------
tcash
[https://github.com/mini2Dx/mini2Dx](https://github.com/mini2Dx/mini2Dx) \- A
simple API for writing 2D games in Java (originally inspired by Slick2D)

I've been extending and updating the framework for a few years now. There's a
tiny userbase but I like writing my games with it.

------
Insanity
All of my side-projects, and my blog. None of the side projects are that
popular (few github stars, max is like 19 stars and that is technically just a
blogpost..)

But I don't mind, I am doing them for the sheer fun of it. I get to hack
around with fun things and feel good about solving some problem. I get much of
the same joy from the job I am doing now, so I feel less guilty about not
having as much time for side projects as I used to.

Some things I've done/am-doing for for the sheer joy of it: \- Pong for the
Gameboy Advance \- Java Swing 'framework' (Just started to be honest) \-
Python text editor

For my blog I mess around with other things such as: \- Sending keystrokes to
Minecraft to 'cheat' (this was years ago) \- Dynamically building a GUI based
on Model classes in Java (reflection hacks) \- Scraping webcomic sites to
store the comics locally

But, as long as you are having fun, what does it really matter what you do :-)

------
swimmadude66
I built a small website for some old groovshark buddies once that site died
where we could meet up, chat, and listen to music together.

Its a collaborative radio, where users queue up songs in playlists, then
rotate playing a song off the top of their list for everyone to hear. It was
originally built as a stopgap until we found something similar but better, so
we called it lifeboat radio. But it's kinda become our permanent home now...

Here's our hosted instance:
[https://lifeboatradio.com/](https://lifeboatradio.com/)

And here's the repo if you want to host your own!
[https://github.com/swimmadude66/YTRadio](https://github.com/swimmadude66/YTRadio)

Join us in our hosted instance on fridays for "Fuck it Friday" where we play
(preferably musical) shit we found from deep in youtube!

------
pawelkomarnicki
I have a cooking/recipes website [http://cookarr.com](http://cookarr.com) — it
doesn't make any money, and I didn't even want to put advertisements there,
because it's my stress-reducing project :-) And kind of a recipe book I made
for myself (and others)

------
fergie
[https://github.com/fergiemcdowall/search-
index/](https://github.com/fergiemcdowall/search-index/) \- its a lib for
making embedable, torrantable, load-into-the-browserable search indices.
Pretty modest downloads so far, but I love hacking on it.

------
hoppyluke
I made some Android games a few years back
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=hoppyluke](https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=hoppyluke)

There's one I still play every now and again, fairly sure I'm my most active
user.

------
victormours
For the past year and a half, I've been organizing the Paris Ruby Workshop
with a friend of mine. It's a monthly meetup where everyone is welcome to come
and pair program on small katas, and chit chat over some pizza. It's free to
attend so we don't make any money out of it.

It's always fun to meet people that we might not have talked to otherwise,
since a lot of attendees are beginners who come from non-engineering
backgrounds. And it's also a pretty good feeling at the end of the evening
when people tell you they had a good time and learned of to program a little
bit better.

I also found it surprisingly easy to setup : grab a few katas from
exercism.io, create a group on meetup.com and find a local startup willing to
host and provide free pizza in exchange for a bit of visibility in the
community, and you're good to go.

------
FigBug
[http://socalabs.com/](http://socalabs.com/)

I just started a few days ago, I'm making VST plugins that emulate sound chips
from old consoles / computers. (There is also a weird vocal synth in there).
Currently working on a C64, hope to have it done tonight.

------
MikeTheGreat
[https://github.com/MikeTheGreat/GLT](https://github.com/MikeTheGreat/GLT)

I wrote "GLT", which stood for 'GitLab Tool'. It was going to enable me to
manage a classroom's worth of git repos, 1 per student per homework
assignment.

I chose GitLab because you can set up your own server, and then lock down
stuff so it's harder for students to copy homework within the system
(obviously they can still copy it offline).

Then I got busy with other stuff.

Then I found out about GitHub Classroom, which is the same thing just hosted
by GitHub. I haven't retooled it to work with GitHub, but I'm hoping it's not
too tough.

(I started off idly wondering whether to pronounce it "Guilt", like "Why
haven't you done more of your grading?" or "gelt", like the candy.)

------
jimaek
Definitely jsDelivr
[https://github.com/jsdelivr/jsdelivr](https://github.com/jsdelivr/jsdelivr)

Billions of requests every month. Building the service is pure joy. I have
lots of new features coming like a new website, stats per project and more.

~~~
aaomidi
How do you handle the traffic? How much does this cost you to run?

~~~
jimaek
All traffic is served by CDN sponsors for free. But I pay for most servers,
services and freelancers like designers and developers.

It costs a lot when I do changes requiring external help which is quite often.

------
pedrokost
I have been making [https://www.klubi.si/](https://www.klubi.si/) sporadically
over the past many months (it was meant to be a weekend project, but it never
ends there...). It's a map of sports clubs in my country.

The idea is to help people find klubs nearby, as well as provide a basic
internet presence to those klubs whore founders don't have the time or
knowledge to create and maintain a website, or even a Facebook page.

The website works by volunteer revision of data, as well as twice a year email
reminders to founders to review the data. This helps ensure that the data is
the most up to date as possible.

Unfortunately, not all klubs even have a public working email address, so
thinking of it, I could probably do something about as well.

------
fernly
I discovered the historic CHIP-8 architecture and decided to write the mother
of all CHIP-8 apps, including an interactive dev environment for it:

[https://github.com/tallforasmurf/CHIP8IDE](https://github.com/tallforasmurf/CHIP8IDE)

------
sideproject
[https://www.sideprojectors.com](https://www.sideprojectors.com)

Been running it for good 4 years now. Do a little bit of maintaining here and
there. I first did it in a hackathon and won a 2nd prize, thought I'll run
with it and it's fun. :)

------
netsec_burn
Making a robot. It's fun, I look forward to making it every day and log my
progress. So far it has depth perception and I have a goal in mind for it.
It's an expensive side project though, I underestimated the price but you
learn a lot about electronics in the process.

------
andywood
[https://gaiaeternal.itch.io/gaia-eternal](https://gaiaeternal.itch.io/gaia-
eternal)

It's a big procedural crafting game. The long-term goal is to make a
Civilization-like game set in a Minecraft-like world, with really good AI.
It's also a testbed for a bunch of ideas I've developed about massive,
virtualized simulation. What that means is that you could in principle have
thousands of cities with millions of individual inhabitants going about their
business. But it's sort of analogous to lazy evaluation in that things are
only computed if they would be perceived by the player, or need to be
consistent with past information the player already knows.

------
kureikain
I have two project which make zero money but I love doing them. I learn so
much from writing code for them and use them as a playground to try out and
apply new technology in a production environment, Yes, they are production
environment because they are severving real customer, just that no one pays me
so far.

[https://noty.im](https://noty.im) An uptime monitoring tool

[https://betterdev.link](https://betterdev.link) a news letter and from there,
I spin up a link sharing service
[https://one.betterdev.link](https://one.betterdev.link) with full text search
for content of link as well.

------
viridian
I started a podcast with another Hacker News poster. We have no ads, make no
money, but it's great fun just talking about big local events in Columbus
Ohio, and also big tech news. It's obviously extremely niche and local, but
there's always something new happening in urban development, politics, that
sort of thing here.

[http://columbusthisweek.podbean.com](http://columbusthisweek.podbean.com) for
the RSS feed, or itunes here: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/columbus-
this-week/id126...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/columbus-this-
week/id1260782318)

~~~
ellius
I don't see a lot of Columbus, OH on HN so here's a shout out. I'll definitely
try the podcast.

~~~
viridian
Cool, thanks for that. Eric and I are both pretty big Columbus evangelists and
are pretty active in the startup weekend community.

------
tripzilch
Related question to ask HN:

Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer hatred?

------
robin_reala
I contribute nice versions of free ebooks to the public domain via
[https://standardebooks.org](https://standardebooks.org) . Working on a
complete Keats collection and Crime and Punishment at the moment.

~~~
chanux
The library seems to be down.

~~~
robin_reala
Oops! I’ll ping the project lead. _Edit: back up_

------
kryptogeist
I made an app to help me study guitar scales:
[https://www.coolfretboard.com/](https://www.coolfretboard.com/)

Basically it's a guitar/bass fretboard where you can select a scale and a root
note, then it displays the notes of that scale on the fretboard. It also has a
bit of info about the scale, like the intervals used to build it.

Initially I didn't plan to publish it, but since it was barely decent I tried
to put it online. I just spent a few bucks to buy the domain, but it don't
cost me anything to keep it online, since it's just a static page and I use
Netlify to host it. Btw, Netlify is awesome! Highly recommended!

------
kovrik
I'm writing R5RS Scheme _interpreter_ implementation in Kotlin (previously in
Java): [https://github.com/kovrik/scheme-in-
kotlin/](https://github.com/kovrik/scheme-in-kotlin/)

It is a hybrid of R5RS Scheme + some things from Kawa, Racket and Clojure. It
doesn't have a proper name and documentation yet.

I'm writing it as a hobby sandbox project, for learning purposes and fun.
Trying to keep it simple and easy to understand (some things are not perfect
though).

Features:

\- full numerical tower

\- lists, vectors, maps, sets, arrays

\- symbols, keywords, strings (mutable/immutable), patterns (regexes), chars

\- one-shot upward continuations

\- Java interop

\- futures, promises, delays, boxes (atoms)

Not implemented yet:

\- macros

\- persistent data structures

\- compiler

\- bugfixes :)

PS: it is a pleasure to write it in Kotlin. Great language!

~~~
kristianp
Cool. You probably already know this, but note that R7RS-small [1] is the most
recent small scheme (the spec is not too much larger that r5rs). There are
enough similarities that it might be worth supporting it.

[1]
[http://trac.sacrideo.us/wg/wiki/R7RSHomePage](http://trac.sacrideo.us/wg/wiki/R7RSHomePage)

~~~
kovrik
Honestly, didn't know that! Looks great, thank you very much! I will check it
out!

------
empressplay
We built an Apple II emulator that renders pixels as OpenGL voxels so you can
play games in 3D to encourage younger people to explore classic software
[http://octalyzer.com](http://octalyzer.com)

------
pablo98
I built a very accurate value estimator for properties en Amsterdam for the
sake of it. Then put it here amsterprice.com . It is slowly starting to pick
up, but as itnis for free I am only watching hosting bucks go. Still proud of
it! :)

~~~
sisoytuceo
cool tool dude! Good luck

~~~
pablo98
Thanks! Now with an actual link:
[https://amsterprice.com](https://amsterprice.com)

------
wolfpld
[https://bitbucket.org/wolfpld/etcpak/wiki/Home](https://bitbucket.org/wolfpld/etcpak/wiki/Home)
\- A very fast ETC texture compressor. Being 80x-500x faster than every other
compression utility (with not that much quality difference) was quite fun.

[https://bitbucket.org/wolfpld/usenetarchive](https://bitbucket.org/wolfpld/usenetarchive)
\- A set of tools to process and view large collections of usenet/mailing list
messages. For example, an archive of polish usenet is 56+ million messages.

------
jakehilborn
Speedr - Free Android app that calculates how much time (or how little time)
you save speeding in your car.

[https://jakehilborn.github.io/speedr/](https://jakehilborn.github.io/speedr/)

------
yangyang
Porting an ancient 6502 Forth to Z80. Nobody will ever use it and there are
already loads of Z80 Forths around, but it's fun and forces me to learn
exactly how a language that's always interested me works. Not on Github yet.

------
luked22
Well i'm hoping to turn them into money making projects but I enjoy just
building in general so here is my list:

[https://techjobshtx.com](https://techjobshtx.com)
[https://www.jobcrate.io](https://www.jobcrate.io)
[http://www.bulgebomb.com](http://www.bulgebomb.com)
[http://www.technicalproductmanager.co/](http://www.technicalproductmanager.co/)

Nothing special in these but I use it mainly to learn new languages and
frameworks, especially in the backend

------
jakobegger
[http://lupa.at](http://lupa.at)

It's a database of roman stone monuments. We have 50000 photos of 27000
stones. The content is collected by two retired archaeologists who travel
Europe in their Volkswagen bus driving from museum to museum. After funding
for the project dried up, I volunteered to make the new website.

The page is in german, but the pictures speak for themselves. For example,
have a look at this query for my favorite mythical hero:
[http://lupa.at/queries/691886695](http://lupa.at/queries/691886695)

------
marcus_holmes
[http://celtic-knotwork.online](http://celtic-knotwork.online)

had to get that code out of my head and onto the web. There's more stuff I
want to do to it when I get the time/passion

------
jhy
I created and hack away on jsoup, a HTML parser/scraper for java.
[https://jsoup.org](https://jsoup.org)

I created it initially just to scratch a personal itch (to make another
project, [https://alterslash.org](https://alterslash.org), more resilient to
upstream changes in HTML), and now get a lot of satisfaction just in knowing
how much it's used around the world for all sorts of use cases I hadn't really
imagined when I started writing it.

And it's great fun finding new areas to benchmark and micro-optimize.

------
gwintrob
I run a newsletter all about APIs called GET PUT POST
([https://tinyletter.com/getputpost](https://tinyletter.com/getputpost)).

Each edition features a Q&A with a company about their API and killer app
ideas for developers. Here's a recent example with a YC S16 company called
Nova: [https://getputpost.co/an-api-that-unlocks-global-credit-
data...](https://getputpost.co/an-api-that-unlocks-global-credit-data-
aef5ef47f481)

A few people have reached out about sponsoring it, but just for fun right now
:)

------
iokarr
Currently I am building a self hosted push notifications application[0] which
is using emqttd[1] as a message broker.

I am writing it in Elixir using Phoenix framework[2].

In the beginning the driving force was my need for a solution like that, but
in long run I started to feel in love with Elixir and Phoenix.

[0]
[https://github.com/7-iris/iris_server](https://github.com/7-iris/iris_server)

[1] [http://emqtt.io/](http://emqtt.io/)

[2] [http://phoenixframework.org/](http://phoenixframework.org/)

------
ioddly
I wrote and use meditations (
[https://github.com/ioddly/meditations](https://github.com/ioddly/meditations)
) to help me organize my day using the principles of habit formation. It's
been pretty immensely helpful to me. Funnily enough although I never thought
of monetizing it, assuming there wouldn't be much interest, there are several
similar apps that seem to be pretty popular and doing well. I keep working on
my own because it's a good learning exercise and I can keep my data encrypted,
locally.

------
ivanceras
A few of mine.

[https://github.com/ivanceras/svgbobrus](https://github.com/ivanceras/svgbobrus)

[https://github.com/ivanceras/spongedown](https://github.com/ivanceras/spongedown)

[https://github.com/ivanceras/curtain](https://github.com/ivanceras/curtain)

[https://github.com/ivanceras/rustorm](https://github.com/ivanceras/rustorm)

I've spin up some semi-polish desktop app, but never get some revenue.

------
jonotime
[https://github.com/jonocodes/envoy](https://github.com/jonocodes/envoy)

Docker Envoy

Encapsulates a kind of different Docker workflow. One where your Dockerfiles
live in a separate area from your project. Includes a bunch of bash helper
functions for common things the containers need to do like wait for other
services.

It also provides a little Dockerized testing system using pytest - which I
might eventually separate out. I am working more on the testing part these
days. And I'm writing a book about some of this.

------
markwatsonatx
I started minienv (don't really like the name) a few months ago:
[http://minienv.com](http://minienv.com)

Trying to make it easier to deliver sample applications that run in your
browser and include backend databases, jupyter notebooks, etc. It basically
allows you to run Docker Compose environments in your own little sandbox +
adds an online editor for modifying code/etc.

I can see it either going towards more guided tutorials or something more like
glitch. Honestly, it's just been super fun to build.

------
kovsky
I'm making a browser extension so that when users buy online with it
installed, portion of the money goes to research-backed charities (no costs
for user). It's a nice feeling to build something that has a possibility of
improving someone's life. And 13 GBP raised so far! :))

URL: [https://altruisto.com](https://altruisto.com) Github:
[https://github.com/Altruisto/altruisto](https://github.com/Altruisto/altruisto)

------
djadmin
I built a CLI for reading medium.com stories.
[https://github.com/djadmin/medium-cli](https://github.com/djadmin/medium-cli)

------
donald_the_game
I created
[https://donaldsbizarreadventure.com/](https://donaldsbizarreadventure.com/)
because I always wanted to be a game developer.

------
moasda
I made a wiki engine: [http://moasdawiki.net/](http://moasdawiki.net/)

I started working on it during my PhD as I was missing a wiki engine to
organize my knowledge that run on a USB stick without installation, supports
images and stores the content in simple text files for easy backup and
restore.

Now I am using it every day in office for my personal notes on projects,
running inside a TrueCrypt container. Meanwhile I added an Android App to sync
the content on my mobile phone.

------
viralpoetry
Alzheimer password generator - Chrome extension for domain dependent password
generation

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/alzheimer-
password...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/alzheimer-password-
genera/emclcafdgdeodlhpenmejdapecfgenof)

[https://github.com/viralpoetry/alzheimer-password-
generator](https://github.com/viralpoetry/alzheimer-password-generator)

~~~
ghusbands
Looks good, but that's a really terrible name for it. Please consider changing
it to something less insulting.

------
pgsandstrom
I like to create small tools that are optimized for me and my families use
case. For example we used Google Keep for shopping lists, but I found it too
bloaty and slow. So I created bös.se (it got SSR and websockets, wohooo!)

[http://xn--bs-fka.se/test-note](http://bös.se/test-note)

It's fun to just care about your own needs when developing. For me it becomes
work when I get feature requests that I don't like myself, but I implement
them to appease others.

~~~
davchana
Do you really use those 2700 lines of CSS code? Just asking, as I usually trim
all the extra code, and use the one I actually need, in all my single page
apps.

~~~
j_s
Ain't nobody got time for that!

Do you have time to share any of your experience with the tools / process that
enables you to get this done in a reasonable timeframe? I'm specifcally
interested in how these have changed over time - how have changes to tools /
process helped get this done faster?

------
negativ0
I build simple products that helps my daily computer interaction, i never
bother to publish them, the only one i published is a Chrome Extension to have
an easy managing solution for tabs opened in Chrome. Published it only because
some friends wanted to use it:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bettermarks/dknlgo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bettermarks/dknlgomcobofpglkfalhibgpeandjmie)

------
mosselman
[https://cadodo.nl/en](https://cadodo.nl/en) \- Create wish lists for your
next birthday/wedding/etc

[https://bookmarkify.it](https://bookmarkify.it) \- Create javascript
bookmarklets

[https://github.com/abuisman/freudjs](https://github.com/abuisman/freudjs) \-
Component library in JS for when view libraries like React are overkill

~~~
davchana
I typed simple Javascript codevas following in your bookmarkify.it

    
    
        alert(1);
    

It gave output as:

    
    
        javascript:(function(){window.s0=document.createElement('script');window.s0.setAttribute('type','text/javascript');window.s0.setAttribute('src','https://bookmarkify.it/bookmarklets/6804/raw');document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].appendChild(window.s0);})();
    

So every time this bookmarklet is clicked, a http request goes to your
website, and then the code executed? I can see the possible use of this in
super duper long javascript code, but why this trip even for simplest code?

------
ianopolous
Currently I spend most of my spare time working on Peergos [0].

The remaining spare time is spent on IPFS related libraries: java-ipfs-api
[1], java-multibase [2], java-multiaddr [3], java-multihash [4], java-cid [5]

I ported tweetnacl from the original c to Java: java-tweetnacl [6]

Before that I wrote JPC [7], an x86 pc emulator. As well as an x86
disassembler: JayD [8]

An implementation of a merkle-btree for use in IPFS: [9]

A JS implementation of Reed Solomon erasure codes: [10]

[0] [https://github.com/Peergos/Peergos](https://github.com/Peergos/Peergos)

[1] [https://github.com/ipfs/java-ipfs-api](https://github.com/ipfs/java-ipfs-
api)

[2] [https://github.com/multiformats/java-
multibase](https://github.com/multiformats/java-multibase)

[3] [https://github.com/multiformats/java-
multiaddr](https://github.com/multiformats/java-multiaddr)

[4] [https://github.com/multiformats/java-
multihash](https://github.com/multiformats/java-multihash)

[5] [https://github.com/ipld/java-cid](https://github.com/ipld/java-cid)

[6] [https://github.com/ianopolous/tweetnacl-
java](https://github.com/ianopolous/tweetnacl-java)

[7] [https://github.com/ianopolous/JPC](https://github.com/ianopolous/JPC)

[8] [https://github.com/ianopolous/JayD](https://github.com/ianopolous/JayD)

[9] [https://github.com/ianopolous/merkle-
btree](https://github.com/ianopolous/merkle-btree)

[10]
[https://github.com/ianopolous/ErasureCodes](https://github.com/ianopolous/ErasureCodes)

------
sir
Com-Phone:
[http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ac.robinson.med...](http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ac.robinson.mediaphone)

An Android app for putting photos/text/sounds together into videos, with the
key aim being to have an interface that is as simple as possible. Started as
part of a research project many years ago, but now mainly a labour of love for
the ~30k users.

------
thesquib
I dabble a bit: Http://playerpart.com - for Shakespeare play reading groups,
helps distribute parts on a play fairly and with as few adjacent speaking
parts as possible. Still in development!

[https://ranktracker.squib.co.nz](https://ranktracker.squib.co.nz) \- a tool
to track an in game characters stats for a very old game called Clan Lord from
Delta Tao. In development.

I seem to end up working on stuff with a very limited user base!

------
germinalphrase
The potential of AR is very exciting as I imagine it. I have been considering
how I would like to see it implemented as an assistive instrument in my
profession - k12 teaching. Teachers largely make traditional use of
traditional tools in their lesson design and - especially - lesson
performance. Sketching out needs and affordances is a fun kind of daydreaming
for what-could-be, but it's not as serious a project as what others here are
sharing.

------
yumaikas
I work on [https://pisc.junglecoder.com](https://pisc.junglecoder.com) as an
exercise in building a stack based language that is a _little_ less arcane
than most that exist at the moment. It was inspired by Factor, Lua and
Javascript, and is built in Go. I like using it for little tasks of generating
bits of boilerplate code, and have some long term ideas around IRC bots,
shells, and the like.

------
kroltan
[http://atmosphir.com/](http://atmosphir.com/)

Atmosphir is a 3D platformer where users create levels and play levels created
by others, with diverse assets and tools.

We made a community game server that aims to restore playability to the game,
since most of it required online to properly function. (user profiles,
equipment and sharing levels).

It is even endorsed by the devs, who kindly redirected the original domain
name to our website.

------
MrBuddyCasino
A web radio / bluetooth speaker for the ESP32:

[https://github.com/MrBuddyCasino/ESP32_MP3_Decoder](https://github.com/MrBuddyCasino/ESP32_MP3_Decoder)

An Alexa smart speaker implementation, also for the ESP32:

[https://github.com/MrBuddyCasino/ESP32_Alexa](https://github.com/MrBuddyCasino/ESP32_Alexa)

Made them to learn C and embedded stuff. Exhausting, but rewarding.

------
tmaly
I have been working on BestFoodNearMe

[https://bestfoodnearme.com](https://bestfoodnearme.com)

I enjoy eating out and trying new food, but I really do not enjoy having to
spend a lot of time reading through reviews to figure out what the best dish
is at a restaurant or even what the best food dishes are in a city.

So this is my attempt to solve the problem of deciding what to eat by allowing
people to find and share food dishes.

------
kgabis
A JSON library in C:
[https://github.com/kgabis/parson](https://github.com/kgabis/parson)

------
billforsternz
I've been working on my chess GUI for over seven years now
[http://triplehappy.com](http://triplehappy.com). I've made a few hundred
dollars in donations, but maybe 10 cents an hour is not why you work on
something like this, it has to be a labour of love. I do wonder if I am going
to be working on this for the rest of my life, there's always more to do....

------
notgoodrobot
[http://sharethewub.com](http://sharethewub.com)

A music player made from URLs pulled from sub-reddits. Its a work in progress.

------
palerdot
I have hotcold typing - [http://hotcoldtyping.com](http://hotcoldtyping.com),
a fun way to learn touch typing with instant feedbacks. I'm proud of this tool
even though it doesn't bring me money.

Also, remindoro - [http://remindoro.com](http://remindoro.com), a chrome
extension to have recurring reminders to help me take breaks.

------
lchsk
[https://github.com/lchsk/xstarter](https://github.com/lchsk/xstarter)

Never planned to make any money out of it, I've made it because I needed it,
and to play around with building a unix tool in C. It's pretty simple but it's
definitely one of the projects I've had the most fun working on and I still
have plenty of things I want to add.

------
thewhitetulip
[https://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-
textboo...](https://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook/)

Stopped making money for me a long time ago. I don't have a computer to update
the tutorial sadly, since my macbook crashed, screen flickering after 1.5yrs.
But I love the project.

I also have a youtube channel which gives me sheer joy.

------
jv22222
I created ezSQL way back. It's a database abstraction layer for PHP.

[https://github.com/ezSQL/ezSQL](https://github.com/ezSQL/ezSQL)

It ended up being used by Wordpress and I got a kick out of that.

Edit: It has been far surpassed by modern query builders such as Laravel
Eloquent. However, it might be useful for hardware projects or other micro
codebases that use sqlite, for example.

------
mattbgates
I built [https://mypost.io](https://mypost.io) which I technically did as a
learning opportunity and was planning on charging, but I'm keeping it free. I
built it to teach others how to code.. using HTML, CSS, and Javascript along
with hints of BB Code.

It is being used around the world.. never advertised it ever, except for the
few times I posted on here and twitter.

------
cbeach
[http://www.caption.me](http://www.caption.me)

I built it 12 years ago and have fostered a small but hugely loyal community
of caption writers ever since.

Automatically loads three funny photos every day from a Flickr group, and is
an ongoing caption competition.

For fun I wrote a real-time collaborative mind mapping feature (node.js / D3)
so people could brainstorm caption ideas for upcoming photos.

------
titusblair
[https://pitchpodcasts.com](https://pitchpodcasts.com)
[http://stockbrokergame.com](http://stockbrokergame.com)
[https://bookcelerator.com](https://bookcelerator.com)
[https://cakedomain.com](https://cakedomain.com)

------
fibonachos
[http://www.proggyfonts.net/](http://www.proggyfonts.net/)

I didn't create any of the fonts. When I discovered the original .com domain
had been lost to squatters, I decided to grab the .net domain and go about
hunting down and re-hosting as much of the original content as possible.

The original site was later restored at a different domain (linked in the
sidebar).

------
avh02
built a slack slash command to spew out excuses (inspired bigtime by giphy) -
mainly because I was unemployed and wanted to learn how the slack APIs work -
[https://xqz.es](https://xqz.es) \- I put a blog post together covering how it
came to be [1] - also forced me to learn how to get Let's Encrypt
certificates.

Also built a twitter stream reading android app [2] - it's butt ugly but was
super useful while I lived in Beirut and there was the occasional bomb going
off (at the time, that's kind of settled for now, and I no longer live there)
- there was a lot i intended to do with it but just sort of... stopped.

[1] - [https://arahayrabedian.github.io/writing-a-slack-
application...](https://arahayrabedian.github.io/writing-a-slack-application/)

[2] -
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rollingbla...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rollingblackout.twittarium)

~~~
da02
Where did you move to after Beirut? Anything you miss about Beirut?

~~~
avh02
as cliche as this answer often is: I miss the food and drink most - never
quite had anything like it since i left (e.g: bartending just doesn't seem the
same on average anywhere else I've been).

so I last 'permanently' lived there in 2013, worked in Dubai for almost 3
years after that and now finishing off my MSc in the UK for the past year.

(edit: to add: I'm from there - so i go back often and get my food fix)

------
bherms
Working on a project for connecting fans of the band Phish and allowing them
to share and curate their stories... Paying out of pocket for minimal hosting
costs, donation buttons all go to Mockingbird Foundation... Hoping to launch
in the next month or so. Doing it because I am a huge fan of the band and the
community and it's a huge part of my life I'd like to give back to.

------
na_ka_na
Two projects on github currently:

Run SQL queries over JSON / Protobuf objects [https://github.com/na-ka-
na/object-query](https://github.com/na-ka-na/object-query)

Compare Excel sheets via command line [https://github.com/na-ka-
na/ExcelCompare](https://github.com/na-ka-na/ExcelCompare)

------
uncled1023
I make a bunch of different little services for others to use. Started for
just friends, but has grown a bit.

I use it a lot to test out new ideas, and learn from it.

[https://www.teknik.io/](https://www.teknik.io/)

Also, I work on a lot of little projects:
[https://git.teknik.io/Uncled1023](https://git.teknik.io/Uncled1023)

------
max0563
Didn't make too much progress yet, but I am making a PHP web framework
inspired by the one file codebase that Bottle.py uses and the structure
(loosely) of Flask. I am a Python programmer that recently had to use PHP for
work, if you haven't noticed :P

[https://github.com/Max00355/Feather](https://github.com/Max00355/Feather)

------
roryisok
[http://getpoe.com](http://getpoe.com) \- distraction free / focus writing app
for Windows, and soon Linux and macOS. It makes me nothing, but I love working
on it. I built it to have a focus writer on windows 8 (there were none that
played move with metro at the time) but I spend more time coding it than
actually writing these days

------
lecarore
I built a super lightweight web app to draw on images. It targets mainly cheap
android phones that don't have storage for a proper app. It's called
[https://minimage.tk](https://minimage.tk), and I use it all the time to
annotate screenshots now. It was a nice pet project to build a progressive web
app in full vanilla.

------
arthurjj
I wrote a children's picture book "The ABCs of Programming" to explain what I
do to my toddler. Previously I was telling him "Daddy talks to robots". Hasn't
made much money yet, but I launched only this week.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074FVWDYJ/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074FVWDYJ/)

------
biztos
In addition to some random, minor bits of free software and one larger bit
that's nowhere near finished, I have for years kept a goofy little minimalist
thing going just to have it in the world:

[http://thislikethat.com](http://thislikethat.com)

It costs me almost nothing, I check in on it a few times a year, and once in a
while I find something fun there.

------
jventura
I built MockREST - [http://mockrest.com/](http://mockrest.com/) \- to create
REST APIs from JSON content.

I've only spent 9€ to buy the domain as the application (django application)
is on a shared server. I'm making 0 €$ from it, as it was made to solve a
problem that I had while teaching mobile development where I teach.

------
LikeAnElephant
A friend and I run [https://www.brewnotice.com](https://www.brewnotice.com)

It started as a project for us and a handful of friends, now we have around
2,000 users. All running on a $5 / mo Digital Ocean server.

We're not planning to ever charge for it. Right now it's just fun to work on,
and it gets us into a handful of beer events. Win win!

~~~
anfractuosity
That looks very nifty.

I sometimes browse untappd to find people reviewing beers in pubs to see
what's probably on tap, but that seems to require going to each specific pubs
page on the app to check what might be on.

So your site looks very handy! (I'm in the UK though alas so I assume I can't
use your app?)

------
deepakkarki
I built [https://discoverdev.io](https://discoverdev.io) \- just to refresh
some basic web skills and learn some machine learning!

Turned out pretty decent, and now I spend about 20 minutes everyday curating
interesting engineering links. Don't think I'll make any money out of it, but
is an interesting post dinner routine :D

------
geuis
[https://jsonip.com](https://jsonip.com)

Been running it for years and supports millions of requests a day. Started off
as a simple experiment with node.js years ago but turned into a utility
thousands of people use every day.

* Ignore jsonip.org. Some Trump troll set that up in June. I made the mistake of not registering all of my domains. Oh well.

~~~
davchana
You can't and don't need to register all the domains, as now there are
literally 100sof extensions.

------
pesfandiar
JavaScript Online: [http://javascript.onl](http://javascript.onl)

A few JavaScript problems that you can solve and grade online (it's a static
website). I haven't done any work on it recently. Added a few Amazon affiliate
links originally, but they didn't make any money and Amazon has closed that
account now.

------
chenshuiluke
For me, it's this HN clone I started working on the other day: [https://ng-
hackernews.lukecs.com/](https://ng-hackernews.lukecs.com/)

The advantages of using it include:

1\. No need to open a new tab just to view comments 2\. It loads a lot more
stories at once than HN does, so you don't need to keep going to the next page

------
PizzaPete
Together with an old study pal I've built a platform for students in the
Netherlands to find housing:
[https://www.roombase.nl/](https://www.roombase.nl/)

We've never made any money with it, it's only costing us money. Learning new
techniques and seeing the site being used makes up for that.

------
beenBoutIT
Chromium for Android is an amazing open source browser. I made getChromium so
that everyone can run Chromium for Android.
[https://github.com/andDevW/getChromium/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/andDevW/getChromium/blob/master/README.md)

------
rkuykendall-com
I wrote a Marvel comics reading-list app using their API, to help myself get
caught up.

It just runs locally right now, and I'm not sure I'll ever publish it, since
I'm forbidden by Marvel from making any money on it, even for server costs,
even by linking to their books on Amazon.

It'll be on github as soon as I get around from un-hardcoding my keys.

------
wheresvic1
I recently created Ewolo, it's a web based workout tracker optimized for
mobile as well - [https://ewolo.fitness](https://ewolo.fitness)

I did it mostly because the existing solutions were horrible and I thought
that it would also be a great way to learn redux. The front-end is also open-
sourced :)

~~~
thecolorblue
If you think about it, isn't all front end open source? :)

~~~
yakshaving_jgt
I've thought about it, and no, not really. I mean, try reading the source of
[http://elm-lang.org/](http://elm-lang.org/).

------
alexweber
I really wanted a t-shirt that said "Ladies Love Cool JPEGs" so I made it, and
made a quick website to sell them. Here's the website in case you also like
90s hip hop references mixed with image formats:
[https://ladieslove.cool/](https://ladieslove.cool/)

------
shime
[https://github.com/shime/livedown](https://github.com/shime/livedown) \-
Realtime Markdown previews for your favorite editor

[https://zapsnap.io](https://zapsnap.io) \- Temporary peer to peer screenshot
sharing (MacOS only for now)

------
andrewdryga
My open source API gateway -
[http://github.com/nebo15/annon.api](http://github.com/nebo15/annon.api).

We built it for a specific purpose since then I've added lots of features and
tools. Right now meditating to find out what should be the next big step for
it :).

------
iwebdevfromhome
SuperMovies Rank: [https://movies.teslark.pw](https://movies.teslark.pw)

Just posted this a couple of days before! Not much notice but still it was
worth a try.

It's a tool to help people create their list of favorite superhero movies and
share them with everyone.

It was a fun way to get myself more familiar with React

------
TazeTSchnitzel
[http://pictoswap.ajf.me/](http://pictoswap.ajf.me/)

It's a note-drawing messaging single-page web app for the Nintendo 3DS, in
homage to the long-since defunct SpotPass (i.e. Internet) functionality of
Nintendo Swapnote/Letter Box.

(Also, every open-source contribution of mine ever.)

------
raphaelrk
[https://summerplaybook.com](https://summerplaybook.com) :)

Essentially a map of where college students are over the summer, run by me and
my friend. I work on it because I really love working with my friend, love
that it connects people, use it myself, and enjoy programming in itself.

------
dmitri1981
[https://www.hnlondon.com](https://www.hnlondon.com) \- been running it for
about seven years and had some amazing speakers give talks. Sets me back a few
grand a year in sponsorship shortfalls, but is an amazing experience when a
great speaker inspires the whole room.

~~~
tugberkk
Hey, this looks pretty good! Nice work.

------
aaronhoffman
[https://www.sizzleanalytics.com/](https://www.sizzleanalytics.com/) \- drag-
and-drop d3.js visualization tool

[https://www.gmailcontactsync.com/](https://www.gmailcontactsync.com/) \- sync
gmail contacts between accounts

------
salutis
I work on a simple 4-7-8 breathing relaxation app for iOS:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/essence/id768594011](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/essence/id768594011)

Great for practicing and exploring — architecture, value types, test-driven
development, etc.

------
SirHound
[https://popmotion.io](https://popmotion.io) \- JavaScript animation
framework. Writing this over the last few years has probably done more to
improve my career than my actual jobs.

I really enjoy it but sometimes maintenance does come at the cost of doing
other projects.

------
calebsurfs
I need coastal weather data to find the best waves for surfing so I built
[http://www.swellmatrix.com](http://www.swellmatrix.com)

I would start other projects with money- making potential but there are always
features to add to the site that can get me more waves...

------
everling
Film nerd, want to trace inspiration between different works. Some find it
useful, but I haven't bothered monetizing it in any way.

Currently reworking the scoring algorithm, will probably replace the awful UI
at some point too.

[http://www.cinetrii.com](http://www.cinetrii.com)

------
nara_s
As a sport enthusiast, I run a website for athletes to tell stories based on
activity data [http://storyteller.fit](http://storyteller.fit)

Doing it out of passion is a great source of motivation and continuous
learning, plus you get in touch with a lot of people.

------
happybuy
I'm about to release Magic Lasso – a free ad blocker for the iPhone, iPad and
macOS simply because I think advertising on the web has gone too far.

[http://magiclasso.co/](http://magiclasso.co/)

Won't make money but hopefully will help make the web better.

------
mslate
A video podcast of guests sharing their career advice for folks coming into
software engineering from unconventional backgrounds:

[http://theaccidentalengineer.com/](http://theaccidentalengineer.com/)

It's an absolute joy, I am making $0 at this point in time.

------
dchuk
Only launched recently, and the prospects of it making money one day are slim:
[https://engineered.at](https://engineered.at)

Still fun to keep up to date with Rails with, and to just code in general (as
a product manager now, don't get to code much).

------
garysieling
[https://www.findlectures.com/](https://www.findlectures.com/)

This is a big enough project to can explore most programming subjects (e.g.
machine learning, Javascript, databases, email), and I enjoy learning about
history by watching old videos.

~~~
pul
Nice work on this site! I think I'll have something to do the coming time ;)
How did you manage to find and index all these videos?

~~~
garysieling
The best thing for finding speakers is having a form on signup for the emails
because I ask people for suggestions, and I've had hundreds.

For the crawling part, this might be interesting (I have a talk coming soon
too) [http://findlectures.com/articles/2017/05/15/Building-a-
Crawl...](http://findlectures.com/articles/2017/05/15/Building-a-Crawler-in-
Node-JS/)

------
qwerty2020
[https://www.mescale.co](https://www.mescale.co)

Simple online weight logging app with pretty charts, first web app I've
actually pushed out into the public. It doesn't make a dime, but I love
tweaking it and seeing the user number slowly climb.

------
rawoke083600
[https://www.fibretiger.co.za](https://www.fibretiger.co.za) \- In South
Africa we got more than 10 fibre networks and almost double the amount of
isps. I've put together this site to compare all the packages on all the
networks.

~~~
koosjan
If only more s.a ppl can get fibre ! Its like the new goldrush in s.a... who
can lay the most fibre !

------
golergka
Curious how no one mentioned kids yet.

~~~
daleroberts
Practicing to make kids == sheer joy?

------
justinholmes
[https://mixmatic.io/](https://mixmatic.io/)

The site focus is about discovery and listening to music together.

Built by a remote team trying to find the best mixes in each genre from
SoundCloud data. But given SC current status will have to be shutdown.

------
nexus-uw
I have been working on [https://ammobin.ca](https://ammobin.ca): a meta search
site for ammo prices across canada for the past 4 months. It is completely
opensource and has gotten some nice love from /r/canadaguns .

------
dmjio
Rewriting Elm in Haskell.

[0] Project Homepage: [https://haskell-miso.org](https://haskell-miso.org)

[1] Github: [https://github.com/haskell-miso/miso](https://github.com/haskell-
miso/miso)

------
hank808
I was oversharing pictures of dogs on Facebook, so I helped build
[https://puppy.pics](https://puppy.pics) where people can post as many dog
pics as they want, because that's what people there want to see.

------
phuson
[https://fridgg.com](https://fridgg.com) \- Fridgg lets you create a gallery
to show off your own food photography, as well as discover other amazing food
photography, delicious recipes, and great food bloggers.

------
wingworks
I run a tv show countdown/tracking site with no ads, because I hate ads.

[https://tvdown.co/](https://tvdown.co/)

It's rather basic at the moment, (I wrote most of the code about 10 years ago)
but I'm working on an update.

------
mcone
I made an API that allows you to programmatically monitoring the status pages
of hundreds of web-based applications:
[https://statusbot.io/](https://statusbot.io/)

Hoping to add a bunch more services and webhooks soon.

------
ctw
Abbot, a build order tool for Age of Empires II -
[https://abbot.rocks](https://abbot.rocks)

When I shared it to the Aoe2 community on reddit it was well received, but as
you can see, practically no one actually used it.

------
rocky1138
Potioneer: The VR Gardening Simulator

[http://store.steampowered.com/app/544410/Potioneer_The_VR_Ga...](http://store.steampowered.com/app/544410/Potioneer_The_VR_Gardening_Simulator/)

------
rpeden
[http://stories.rpeden.com](http://stories.rpeden.com)

It was never intended to make me any money - it's just a story aggregator I
made to help me keep track of HN and my favourite subReddits all in one place.
:)

------
damirkotoric
I'm in the middle of building [https://minihero.org/](https://minihero.org/)
and hoping to ship next week. I hope that in the future volunteering will be
as easy as hailing an Uber.

------
tejas1mehta
1\. imse.co - internet movie search engine. Its google for movies. Allows for
search queries like:

\- johnny depp fantasy movies on netflix

\- english scifi movies on netflix

\- english movies about lawyers on netflix or hulu

\- movies similar to the pursuit of happyness

2\. activify.org - search engine for movies, shows & music.

------
rahulshiv
[http://www.notematics.com](http://www.notematics.com) \- AI Note-taking
assistant for sales calls. Learning AI & building this has resulted in a lot
of fun & personal growth!

------
jqbx_jason
Makes no money but it does helps me discover new music and I really enjoy the
community :)

Also the development challenges are super fun (real time chat, multi platform,
AI).

[https://www.jqbx.fm](https://www.jqbx.fm)

Come join the fun!

~~~
jqbx_jason
Sorry- should also point out: It's a platform that lets you listen to music in
sync with others through Spotify (like tt.fm). You can be a DJ, vote on the
track, or star it for later. Has been super useful for music discovery and
making internet friends.

------
kaundur
I built Cmdo, a command line todo list written in python. Still in its early
stages, but it’s been fun to create

[https://github.com/Kaundur/cmdo](https://github.com/Kaundur/cmdo)

------
logikblok
I made a things while back using IFTT and Reddit very low maintenance but it
brings me joy.
[http://www.putyouinabettermood.com/](http://www.putyouinabettermood.com/)

------
jordanrobinson
Making websites like this:
[http://javascriptbythekilogram.online/](http://javascriptbythekilogram.online/)

Though I can't really take the credit on this one, I just had the idea.

------
maehwasu
Getting reasonably complex front-end programs running in a purely functional
(Purescript) was really fun, and made me like the front-end for the first
time. Been meaning to do a writeup of my experience when I have time.

------
kidproquo
See N Tell [1] - A web-based sentence construction game to help 5-10 year-olds
to learn words via images from Google Image Search. Earnings: 0

[1]: [https://seentell.me](https://seentell.me)

------
rock_hard
I am running a Burning Man camp with 200 people on the side.

We have developed our own modular solar electric grid...that powers the whole
camp...trying to prototype carbon neutral living...it's a lot of work...and a
lot of fun :)

------
is0tope
[http://randomport.io](http://randomport.io)

My first attempt to create something using create-react-app. Generates a
random ephemeral port if you can't think of a port for a service.

------
ClimbsRocks
auto_ml: Automated machine learning at production speeds.

[https://github.com/ClimbsRocs/auto_ml](https://github.com/ClimbsRocs/auto_ml)

My dad keeps asking me how I plan on making money from this project, given the
amount of effort I've poured into it. He grew even more confused once I told
him that a company called DataRobot raised over a hundred million dollars to
build essentially the same product.

But it just brings me joy to make ML available to everyone.

If you have any feedback, please let me know! I'd love to know how I can make
automl better for you.

------
zacharynewton
Working on a pretty sick karaoke website as well as a jeopardy training
application. I figured since both involve lots of copyright nonsense that it
was best just to do these as personal labors of love.

------
spajus
As someone who wants to be a gamedev some day, I'm building a community for
indie game developers: [https://www.gamehero.org](https://www.gamehero.org)

------
xiaq
A Unix shell that hopefully sucks less than more traditional shells:
[https://github.com/elves/elvish](https://github.com/elves/elvish)

------
quangv
Sweet post bait. I'm working on an online notes organizer. I have ADHD-PI and
I've been creating one for myself for the last few years. (I recently found
out I might have ADHD)

HTTPS://OrgNote.com

------
TYPE_FASTER
I wrote a web e-mail client that pulled e-mail from three or four accounts
into a single responsive UI, and filtered through a whitelist. It was really
handy. Note to self, get that working again.

------
cdelsolar
[https://www.aerolith.org](https://www.aerolith.org) \- My pet project for the
last 10 years, a Scrabble word study app. I love working on this thing.

------
ankitank
Heimdall: HTTP request logger for Vapor Web Framework
[http://github.com/himani93/heimdall](http://github.com/himani93/heimdall)

------
kral
I maintain a Mastodon instance for those who are interested in functional
programming: [https://functional.cafe](https://functional.cafe)

------
redbluething
Yep. I have been working on mapping the Patrick O'Brian age of sail novels for
the last 11 years.

[http://www.cannonade.net](http://www.cannonade.net)

------
vasusen
I have my take on moon-phase based messaging app that I continue for fun -
[http://moonletter.com/](http://moonletter.com/)

------
return0
A directory of opensimulator virtual worlds ("open source second life")
[http://opensimworld.com](http://opensimworld.com)

------
kehers
[https://thefeed.press/](https://thefeed.press/)

Built for personal use. Not currently making any money but hope to monetise
sometime later.

------
davepeck
A little website for people who want to play a (casual) game of Go:
[http://go.davepeck.org/](http://go.davepeck.org/)

------
agentultra
Working on a proof of a modular exponentiation algorithm in Lean with a focus
on performance. Hoping to be able to extract a low-level ASM or C
implementation from the proof.

~~~
aneutron
Any chance you'd have a link to a repository where you publish your work ?

~~~
agentultra
I'm not working alone on it. Publishing my work at
[https://github.com/agentultra/lean-
modexp](https://github.com/agentultra/lean-modexp)

------
cromulent
The Helsinki Foundation - land conservation through direct action.

[https://www.helsinkifoundation.org](https://www.helsinkifoundation.org)

~~~
abraae
Such a great idea. It raises lots of questions (can I visit my space? pest
control? etc.), but kudos to you.

------
StefanKovachev
[https://inwhy.net](https://inwhy.net) Means "Inside the question 'why?'"
still working on my idea...

------
zie
[https://sexwork.us/](https://sexwork.us/) SexWork.us is aiming to be a
reference guide all about sex work.

------
wigrb23
[https://collegecollections.co/](https://collegecollections.co/) \-
marketplace for artwork by art students

------
sellislem
[http://techexplicit.tk/](http://techexplicit.tk/) \- a tech based news and
review website that makes 0$

------
eneve
FAQr - Android app for reading Gamefaqs (best for retro ASCII) -
[https://faqrapp.com](https://faqrapp.com)

------
carc1n0gen
[https://weelnk.com](https://weelnk.com) little link shortener I built. Been a
while since I revisited it

------
kevinyen
[https://sympost.com](https://sympost.com) To help you get heard on the
internet instantly. Early beta.

------
adnanh
[https://github.com/adnanh/webhook](https://github.com/adnanh/webhook)

Incoming webhook server

------
ichik
[https://sqncbrk.com](https://sqncbrk.com) isn't going to make any money any
time soon.

------
khc
goofys -
[https://github.com/kahing/goofys/](https://github.com/kahing/goofys/) \- like
s3fs except a lot faster

catfs - [https://github.com/kahing/catfs/](https://github.com/kahing/catfs/)
\- generic disk cache for fuse filesystems

------
foxhop
[http://botoform.com](http://botoform.com) | Architect infrastructure on AWS
using YAML

------
shalabhc
[http://howl.io](http://howl.io)

A lightweight, native, extensible text editor.

------
rytill
[https://www.poltr.com](https://www.poltr.com)

Clean quick polling website

------
niekutis
[http://bugavuga.com/](http://bugavuga.com/)

------
stanislavb
[http://emojihomepage.com](http://emojihomepage.com)

------
somid3
You Exec - [http://youexec.com](http://youexec.com)

------
jaden
[https://shortmarks.com](https://shortmarks.com) \- Keyword bookmarks across
browsers (I started using them in Firefox, and it was a pain to keep them in
sync). It has about 1,400 users, much fewer active. I keep thinking I should
rebuild it and figure out a way to make money from it.

------
shove
I'm now a partner in a barcade. No chance of making any money any time soon :)

------
eviaac
and another project for some software piece i made,
[http://zer0berung.philippteister.com](http://zer0berung.philippteister.com)

install, and get your entire hdd occupied with zeros

------
eviaac
i made a website for selling unused files that have been harvested from
digital trash bins. [http://binlover.net](http://binlover.net)

------
eviaac
i made a website where i sell unused data that has been harvested from digital
trash bins. [http://binlover.net](http://binlover.net)

------
misra8
www.zemneo.com

Wanted to solve the problem of information overload and product discovery ,
not making any money because I am not passionate about marketing. Do you think
this is worth pursuing?

------
pboutros
I've been doing this for years - it's my favorite.

www.cheeseand.beer

------
evantahler
actionherojs.com

I've spent far more than I've made on this... but it's how I think API
frameworks should work!

------
viiralvx
socialmuter.com, pageunliker.com, fade.pics. All are pure JS, haven't modified
them, they work fine.

------
Spien
Cat chasing raspi car using a CNN.

------
reviewmon
Mapduel.com GoogleBattle.com

------
Windson
www.thankyouopensource.com

Write a thank you letter to your favor open-source project

------
krisives
hashes.download a Bitcoin Cash API one of the first

------
whataretensors
My brother and I work on a generative adversarial network(deep learning) with
pip package and API:

[https://github.com/255BITS/HyperGAN/](https://github.com/255BITS/HyperGAN/)

It's meant for artists, developers, and researchers who are interested in this
new tech.

~~~
futhey
Thanks!

------
MoDu_HN
I keep developing LiveStickies, a UWP for simple notes, because all the
existing ones were crap (for me).

[https://www.microsoft.com/store/apps/9nblggh4wm0q](https://www.microsoft.com/store/apps/9nblggh4wm0q)

In the meantime, I've grown to 20k downloads and 200 daily users.

I regularly receive e-mails and reviews from people telling they love the app
and use it everyday, including someone's grandma, which is very encouraging.
:)

------
heyok
[http://heyokapp.co](http://heyokapp.co) It was fun to code and it makes
organizing with friends a breeze

Here's the facebook page - facebook.com/heyokapp About video -
[https://www.facebook.com/heyokapp/videos/460327694335849](https://www.facebook.com/heyokapp/videos/460327694335849)

~~~
ebbflowgo
Oh, what? This is great

------
megamindbrian
Working on managing Angular code using jupyter notebooks similar to Airbnb and
their react-atom design flow? I think I got that right, they blogged about it
but I never saw any code from it.

------
pottersbasilisk
Im working on a small project to have ai learn to paint scenes based feeding
in styles and objects that I personally classified.

Its been very interesting and almost parental joy to see when the right
logical connections are made and the art looks good.

------
the_cat_kittles
_serious, measured tone_ "all of these projects are of no benefit or value to
anyone, otherwise they would be earning money."

