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Posted by u/jackedEngineer a year ago
Ask HN: What non-AI products are you working on?
I see so many AI product launches. Is there anyone who is working on non-AI products?

If so what are you working on?

koeng · a year ago
I’ve been working on a synthetic DNA assembly company. Basically, I figured out how to assemble DNA for people at a fraction of what it normally costs, so they give me a sequence, and then I make it in real life for them, then ship it to them.

Most of my customers have been AI protein designers, ironically. Turns out SOMEBODY has to wrangle atoms in the real biological world and that’s me!

After almost a year of work I finally smoothed out all the kinks in the process, so can now go from a design to synthetic DNA in a cell in about a week (not counting oligo pool synthesis time). I can do about 600,000bp per week, which is large enough to synthesize the smallest bacterial genome (each week), tho I only do about 1000bp fragments. I’m also completely bootstrapped and self funded, and only get help from my several opentrons robots

unsupp0rted · a year ago
I once met a freelance bespoke industrial adhesive maker. He takes orders from various factories for adhesives with specific properties, then uses his knowledge of chemistry + trial & error to make one that fits the specs provided.

Bespoke synthetic DNA is much cooler though.

koeng · a year ago
A bespoke freelance industrial adhesive maker sounds like such a niche job, that's awesome. I would love to see a hackernews-type post with details of how he thinks about making a specific adhesive.
samstave · a year ago
Is he a vendor in my Fallout 4 gameplay?
drones · a year ago
If I ever met you in real life I think you would be the coolest person I've ever met.
koeng · a year ago
Thanks!
kuczmama · a year ago
That is very cool. I'm curious if you can share some of the things people are using this synthetic DNA for?
koeng · a year ago
I can share a few things! (but definitely not all)

- One is finding different T7 RNA polymerases with unique properties by manipulating the backbone. They can be used for things like in-vitro RNA production for vaccines - Another is synthesizing a phage that has been sequenced for a specific organism, but that the samples are now lost of. So resynthesizing that genome from scratch - A different project (personal one) is building a DNA parts toolkit with standardized DNA parts so you can combine em together like legos. Pretty much nowhere but FreeGenes has open source genetic parts (I used to run that project), and I think open source genetic parts need to be in the world

KRAKRISMOTT · a year ago
Do you have in-house protocols or are you using the off the shelf stuff?
koeng · a year ago
I sometimes derive protocols from off-shelf ones, but pretty much everything beyond that is in-house. Most off-shelf protocols work for 1 sample in 1 tube - I had to adapt them to working on 1 plate of 384 tubes (and get those to work with robots). There is a significant amount of robotic code that I use, and a few custom protocols that are from a random obscure scientific paper in 1980s or 1990s
blueferret · a year ago
Now this is interesting. I've read about using synthetic DNA for data storage, but other uses surely abound.

I don't suppose you'll need documentation help at some point in the near future...?

xyst · a year ago
Synthetic DNA for data storage seems much higher to degradation (ie, heat, light, or other sources of radiation). Not sure if I would use syn DNA to for anything long term.
b20000 · a year ago
are you not scared of synthesizing deadly bacteria?
koeng · a year ago
No, I know pretty much everything I synthesize. Once I don't, I'll just connect some screening software.
reaperman · a year ago
Thank you so much for posting this. It's wonderful to hear how excited you are about it all.
javcasas · a year ago
That is some seriously cool stuff.
logtempo · a year ago
koeng · a year ago
That's how Twist/Agilent do oligo pool synthesis (and Dynegene now). I'm pretty interested in the Genscript / Avery digital method of electrochemical synthesis. Turns out those pools ain't good enough to be used in a biological context, which is where I come in - I can assemble them well into sequence perfect stuff
JohnMakin · a year ago
this is the coolest thing I have ever read. How did you even get into that?
koeng · a year ago
I found a virology textbook at the local Catholic book fair when I was in 6th grade, got hooked, teacher in 7th grade let me order GFP transformation kits to the school that I could do at home, then off to the races from there. I was in this article if you're interested in more deets: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/science/biohackers-gene-e...
jmkni · a year ago
How the fuck does one "assemble DNA" lol

Sorry but that's so outside of my understanding it reads like pure science fiction

(I'm sure it's a thing, I'm just a moron)

koeng · a year ago
I use restriction enzymes + ligase to cut DNA, then paste it back together at specific sequences. It's pretty simple honestly! https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-biology/gene-expressi...

The key is doing that at an industrial scale, reproducibly, with hundreds to thousands of plasmids at once. Becomes less simple. You encounter bullshit problems with biology, which I guess is valuable because it makes a moat!

stavros · a year ago
Very very small tweezers.
tip_of_the_hat · a year ago
I'm working https://annotate.dev, a tool inspired by the Stripe documentation, to let anyone create step by step code walkthroughs. Here's a sample of a walkthrough you can create: https://annotate.dev/p/hello-world/learn-oauth-2-0-by-buildi...

Would love to hear any feedback thoughts!

roijaboc · a year ago
This is a great app, especially in this age of AI code generation, I am already using it. Looking forward for features such as light mode and exportability among other things.
orblivion · a year ago
This seems like a cool idea but I'd have to see it in action for something I need to learn.

The first thing that jumps to mind is that I want to click on a piece of code and see the explanation for it. It seems that it only goes in the other direction. I could imagine looking at the code and understanding most of it and just wanting to understand part of it.

I could anticipate an issue though - it could be many-to-one from explanation to code. The UI for that would be complicated.

williamdclt · a year ago
If you’ve not seen it, there’s a vscode extension called CodeTour that does something similar, could be good inspiration (or maybe you already do better!)
tip_of_the_hat · a year ago
It's the first time I've heard of CodeTour, I'm really impressed from what I've seen thus far. Digging a bit deeper now, thanks for sharing!
trenchgun · a year ago
This is great idea!

I actually have several potential improvement ideas.

1. Put the walkthrough it in a graph, or a minimap to see the whole picture easily? Or in a https://c4model.com/ visualization 2. Why not make clickable code references visually stand out? 3. Make a VScode extension for it

tip_of_the_hat · a year ago
Thanks for taking a look and sharing feedback!

I'm not familiar with the c4 model, I'll need to investigate.

> Why not make clickable code references visually stand out

Is the goal here that you want to know that a specific text block annotates a part of the code?

> Make a VScode extension for it

I think I will! I need to noodle a bit on the user experience here

ch1234 · a year ago
This is awesome!! I can see a major use case for enterprise or government but along with that would come the desire for on-prem. Any chances of that happening?
tip_of_the_hat · a year ago
Thanks for checking it out!

I'd be happy to build and support an on-prem solution, but I'd a need commitment from an enterprise/government org. If that's something you're interested in, shoot me an email at alex@annotate.dev!

sentientslug · a year ago
This is a really clever idea, and worked great on mobile as well. Is there a way to choose to display the code window underneath the documentation instead of on top?
tip_of_the_hat · a year ago
Thanks for the kind words!

Not currently, can you elaborate why you'd want to the code window at the bottom?

entropie · a year ago
This is really cool. I wish there was something like that when I learned to code.
Kkoala · a year ago
That's a cool idea!
rafbgarcia · a year ago
Great idea! What did you use for designing the UI?
tip_of_the_hat · a year ago
Thank you for checking it out!

I use Figma to get a proof of concept of how I want things laid out. From there it's more tinkering at the code level.

mclightning · a year ago
can this be self-hosted?
tip_of_the_hat · a year ago
Not yet, what use case do you have in mind for self hosting?
jawns · a year ago
You know how sometimes the gift you really want is cash or a gift card, but people often prefer to give you physical gifts that you can open and admire?

Imagine a line of faux jewelry that is marked up to real-jewelry prices and that, unbeknownst to the gift giver, comes with a hidden gift card code. So somebody asks you what you'd like for your birthday and you say, "Oh, I'd really like some Lagniappe brand jewelry," and they go out and buy you a $50 necklace that's actually worth only a buck or two, but has a gift card code worth $45 on the underside of the box.

You thank them profusely for the lovely necklace, they feel good for having bought you something besides a gift card, and you feel good that you can put $45 toward a new washing machine.

pkoird · a year ago
This is such a first world problem. It's normalized in many 3rd world countries to give and receive cash (red envelopes). Directly not giving money and resorting to gift cards (and roundabout methods like these) just, doesn't make sense to my third world brain is all I'm saying.
nitwit005 · a year ago
Many, meaning, not all. It's obviously a cultural thing. That red envelope idea is ancient.

China and Vietnam that do the red envelope bit would be "second world" countries, incidentally, as they were part of the communist block under that old "three worlds" labeling.

corimaith · a year ago
Red Envelopes are more of a formality where you more or less receive as much as you give out. People in Asia still do "first world" presents in Christmas or Birthdays or etc.
mbs159 · a year ago
>This is such a first world problem.

Indeed it seems that way. It's kind of funny and sad at the same time when people get frustrated over such things.

alex_lav · a year ago
Okay, and what is your hope by making this comment?
curtisblaine · a year ago
This sounds very useful, but isn't this service going to automatically fail as soon as it starts to be known because you can't market it to the intended audience (the gift-receivers) without marketing at the same time to the adversarial audience (the gift-givers)?
reaperman · a year ago
I love the thought! Just a friendly warning - gift cards attract the fraud industry. This could result in a wide array of undesirable effects. Make sure you or someone on your team or someone you can call up and consult with knows the industry of gift card fraud really well. This will be very helpful in early planning and feasibility studies.
unsupp0rted · a year ago
We have taken control of your computer. Now go buy 6 necklaces and call us back.
lesostep · a year ago
Wouldn't it be simpler to sell $20-30 dollar jewelry for 50$ with explicit promise that this jewelry is very easy to return in exchange for the 50$ gift card? You could add RFC chips to them so people couldn't return counterfeits. Epoxy resin is good at covering chips.

It would solve the problem of littering your house with cheap products, save the buyer the embarrassment of gifting something that looks like 2$ jewelry (it is noticeable when it is that cheap), and it makes easier for people to pretend that they actually want that necklace for the necklace and not for the gift card.

carlosjobim · a year ago
This is so incredibly narcissistic and mercantile. Being a grown up means you understand that you're not owed any gifts and that when somebody makes you a gift it is mainly for their pleasure and something to be grateful for, that they thought of you.

These kind of people who think receiving gifts is some kind of entitlement are the same kind of people who start bringing up their diets when you invite them for dinner. Cold, calculating, reptilian. No human emotion or joy of life.

fragmede · a year ago
Wait, hang on, not wanting to be served poison for dinner is a cold calculating reptilian thing to do? What else do these reptilians do? Run the government?
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK · a year ago
well, the secret will come out at the moment they google up that lagniappe jewelry.

Deleted Comment

j2bax · a year ago
Awesome! Makes me think of this song: https://youtu.be/4s0KidJf5FQ?si=H56SCAivnsU6jy6W
westcort · a year ago
This is brilliant
stoniejohnson · a year ago
Isn't it super likely the gift buyer will realize what's up when making the purchase?

There would have to be two websites or something.

koolba · a year ago
Is it? It just seems wasteful and unnecessery. Even gifts cards are pretty stupid for anyone that has access to a credit card. It’s strictly worse than having the actual cash for all but the unbanked (including kids).
bbor · a year ago
I mean... this is kinda... fraud... I guess not in the legal sense. Gift fraud. Christmas fraud!
OisinMoran · a year ago
I've been working on a social link sharing site called lynmki that allows you to follow a subset of someone's interests rather than having to follow everything they post. E.g. Someone posts lovely examples of typography, and also about events on in their city but you live halfway across the globe so just want the typography.

I'm focussing on smaller circles, avoiding "algorithmic" feeds (aware sorting by reverse chronological order is an algorithm), and no advertising.

It borrows a lot from the greats like HN, Delicious, etc. and there's a long way to go (I just added likes last week) but people are already finding some nice links from it!

You can see it at https://lynkmi.com/ and I'd recommend reading the about page for even more. If it sounds interesting to you please sign up to the waitlist—it's very short!

I'm also building it in public so follow along if you want: https://twitter.com/TheOisinMoran/status/1725929527761596434

canadiantim · a year ago
I feel dyslexic even trying to read that domain name. I want it to say link me, but the f is lynmki

edit: thank goodness the domain name actually is https://lynkmi.com/, crisis averted.

webspinner · a year ago
Are you going to add RSS? This would be cool!
OisinMoran · a year ago
Yes it's on the roadmap for sure! Want to be able to import RSS feeds and also have an RSS feed for every tag.
sdwr · a year ago
I started on a similar link gatherer at http://sdwr.ca

#1 use right now is making looping clips from youtube videos, but I want it to function as a semi-shared way to organize bookmarks

pyrrhotech · a year ago
I've been building algorithmic trading models for the last 4+ years. After trading them successfully with my own capital for more than a year, I launched https://grizzlybulls.com as an alternative to the traditional hedge fund monetization path.

Since launching in January 2022, we've significantly outperformed the market with lower volatility and reduced max drawdown:

Model - Return - Max drawdown

S&P 500 (benchmark): +9.91% -27.56%

Platinum: +45.34% -16.48%

Gold: +39.53% -19.12%

Silver: +17.24% -22.96%

Bronze: +14.12% -23.93%

Vix Basic: +9.81% -24.23%

TA - Mean Reversion: +17.77% -19.92%

TA - Trend: +17.29% -24.98%

This is an unleveraged, apples to apples comparison. These are not high frequency trading models. Most of them only make a trade every 2-4 weeks on average. During long signals, the models are simply long the S&P 500 and during short signals, they go to cash. This can be implemented very tax efficiently by holding a core ETF long position that never gets sold and then selling S&P 500 futures (ES or MES) of equal value to the ETFs against the long position. This way your account will accumulate unrealized capital gains indefinitely and you'll only pay tax on the net result of successful hedging. The cherry on top is that the S&P 500 futures are section 1256 contracts that are taxed at 60% long term / 40% short term capital gains rates regardless of the duration they are held.

The models use a variety of indicators, many of them custom built. Most important are various VIX metrics (absolute level, VIX futures curve shape/slope, divergences against S&P 500 price, etc), trend-following TA metrics (MACD, EMV, etc), mean-reversion TA metrics (Bollinger Bands, CMO, etc), macroeconomic (unemployment, housing starts, leading composite), and monetary policy (yield curve inversion, equity risk premium, dot plot, etc). They've been backtested very cautiously to avoid overfitting.

bbor · a year ago
Just popping in to say:

1. Love the name, not enough Pyrrhonists on hacker news these days! The OG.

2. Love the website, your design skills are killer. I hate that entire industry and even still my monkey brain went "oo I want to see the Euphoria index, sign up!"

3. This is kinda quintissential AI. Not to distract this thread from the valuable topic of non-trendy projects, but this is a great example of why we need to reclaim "AI" as a much more general term. I mean "algorithmic trading" could be a synonym for "human-like problem solving"...

c_o_n_v_e_x · a year ago
Congrats on your success to date. I spent quite a bit of time putting together a trend system based on breakouts in futures markets. The system itself was nothing overly special. I purchased a few decades worth of futures data, created and backtested the system with Tradingblox.

The biggest problem was that the system really needed a minimum account of $1m USD so that each position wasnt too large and to get the diversification across different futures markets.

m3kw9 · a year ago
Real test is when you have a down market. Everyone one looks like a genius in a bull market
WorkerBee28474 · a year ago
The parent comment says they launched in Jan 2022. Jan 2022 to Jan 2023 was a down market.
cosgrove · a year ago
This is nice to hear about. Can you tell me more about how your live results matched or diverged from your backtesting?

Did you list the returns of the commodities as a comparison, or are you trading those futures as well in the mix? (I know you only talked about ES/MES)

pyrrhotech · a year ago
I've studied many systems over the years and never found any that matched or outperformed their backtests. So far our live results have hit between 1/4 and 3/4 of backtest performance depending on the model. Needless to say the high inflation and high interest rate market climate over the last two years hasn't been seen in the rest of the backtest period, but conditions are starting to normalize now.

Nevertheless, it would be prudent to expect any algorithmic trading model to underperform its backtest going forward, but there's enough leeway in the CAGR and max drawdown figures to underperform the backtest and still produce substantial alpha, especially for the more advanced models.

Right now the models are specialized to trade equities. I may develop new models that trade commodities in the future though.

halfcat · a year ago
Is it correct to say you need a multiple of 50x the value of SPY to execute this strategy (if the minimum you can hedge with is 1x MES)?
pyrrhotech · a year ago
To implement the strategy in the most tax efficient manner without leverage you would want to have an account worth 5 * (S&P 500 futures price). Today that would be about $26,375. MES uses a multiple of 5 while ES uses a multiple of 10.

However, with today's $0 commissions, if you aren't overly concerned about taxes, you can try out this strategy with as little as $500 and simply buy and sell one share of the ETF VOO on signal changes. Alternatively, if you have the risk appetite, you can get started with trading MES futures with less than $10k, though caution should always be warranted when using any amount of leverage.

carabiner · a year ago
Have you retired yet?
AznHisoka · a year ago
I’m building a crawler for remote job postings. As well as a daily email that emails the latest remote jobs found in the past 24 hours to people who sign up: https://bloomberry.com/remote-jobs/

So far, there’s more than 1500 subscribers after a month and a half

jsra · a year ago
Subscribed! This is great.

Also, I thoroughly enjoyed your article -- How AI is disrupting the demand for software engineers: data from 20M job postings (https://bloomberry.com/how-ai-is-disrupting-the-tech-job-mar...). I've subscribed to your newsletter as well. Keep up the great work!

jonnycoder · a year ago
This is fantastic, I just subscribed!

I had a similar idea of scraping lever, greenhouse and linkedin to get informed of absolute latest senior software engineer jobs. I also wanted to correlate to past job posts to rule out duplicates/reposts, and to analyze against what I am looking for. Some jobs rule out certain states and timezones. Other jobs are primarily java which is my only hard-no.

icy · a year ago
Would be cool if you could add user-specific filters somehow (via email?), since, looking at the previews it seems largely US-specific. I’d like to see EU/global remote jobs.
willemh · a year ago
A place to connect the books you want to read with friends who already own them, and vice-versa. Imagine a distributed library composed of your friends’ books.

Encouraging sharing with friends and starting conversations about topics you might never have considered having not known they were into the same books as you.

Very rough draft but it has the core functionality, even if it’s a bit cumbersome.

https://opnshlf.com

moralestapia · a year ago
Hey, just a suggestion,

I thought of doing this a while ago but for children books, never went on to actually do it but I definitely see a need in there,

* Children books are quite expensive

* Most of those you get over them in a couple minutes to an hour

* Your kids want new books every single day

Buying 5-10 and regularly trading them with other parents seems like a neat solution.

willemh · a year ago
I like this idea. Would you imagine the functionality being much different to what is already there? Or is it more a difference of framing?
will_wright · a year ago
love the idea! I would have registered if it weren't using passkey. is there a reason you chose this for user verification? I've never used it and am hesitant to adopt technologies that give chrome more control over the browser market
PufPufPuf · a year ago
Many password managers have passkey support, I'm using the free version of Bitwarden and can recommend it. Windows Hello can also be used, and afaik Apple Keychain too.
willemh · a year ago
Thanks!

I chose it because I wanted to learn more about passkeys and I liked the idea that I wouldn’t have to deal with private credentials themselves; just save a public key to my database. I use both KeePassXC and Bitwarden and they’re slowly getting support for passkeys (currently only on desktop).

I briefly had the ability to add a new passkey to the same account but wanted to keep it simple for my friends and not confuse them more. If that’s something that could help I’d be open to adding it in again.

danthedudeis · a year ago
Hey

I've been wanting to build this too. Want to chat? Happy to collaborate

My username at gmail.com

stpn · a year ago
I've been working on a local-first personal finance/expense tracker called Tender: https://tender.run

Tender runs as a PWA and uses the Automerge crdt and sqlite via wasm. The app more or less runs entirely in your browser (works offline!), though our server proxies connections to pull in plaid/splitwise data.

Feature-wise, we're targeting folks who do want to manage their expenses but not have to do fine-grained budgeting. There's tools for tracking getting paid back and a splitwise integration as well. The app is desktop-centric right now, but we're working on getting a good mobile workflow together too.

Since everything is browser-based, it was actually quite easy to get a demo sandbox environment working. You can give it a quick spin here: https://demo.tender.run

alemanek · a year ago
Hey, so you may not be targeting this particular market but it is adjacent and something I would pay $5-10 a month for. Have you considered expanding this eventually into a Empower (formerly Personal Capital) competitor?

What I mainly use from them is:

- investment performance tracking across my various accounts.

- retirement planning/forecasting

- cash flow, expense, and income tracking overtime.

- warnings about upcoming credit card bills; amount is never right but I pay my statement in full so just a little thing saying “Hey this is going to hit your account on this date” is helpful for me.

- basic budgeting

Anyway a local first privacy respecting alternative I would definitely pay for. iPad support would be a must for me.

Just some unsolicited feedback. Best of luck

EDIT: forgot to mention the reason I am looking for alternatives. Empower bought Personal Capital and are getting much more aggressive in pushing their management services.

So, I figure it is only a matter of time before they either start selling my data or cut me off since I am not interested in anything they are selling. They have really nice iOS apps though.

stpn · a year ago
Hah - I too am a former personal capital (and mint) user.

We've thought about if we want to tackle those features and become an all-encompassing personal finance, but it certainly is a wide feature set to cover for our team. Right now we're focused on polishing our small feature set, though I appreciate the feedback.

cagmz · a year ago
I'm a former Personal Capital and Mint (:tear:) user. Checkout Monarch Money.
singhrac · a year ago
The 1-liner description reminded me of https://actualbudget.com/, which I think is mostly defunct now since the main author took a day job (looked very cool at the time but I never tried it unfortunately). Open source too.
webspinner · a year ago
It's definitely something I need. I don't need anything really complicated. I've actually been looking for a service like this for a while. Tried Mint once, but thought it was just a bit too much.