Two thoughts:

1) I'm not 100% sure what to do when the ratio can't be complied with because the original photo has a certain shape, but I'm definitely thinking about it; in general, how to get as much as a consistent crop is the main reason for FaceCrop;

2) trying to keep the UX as simple as possible, so I assume (in this MVP) that the user wants to crop pictures at the same size/quality of the original, and do any further edits elsewhere... but it does make sense and it's probably something not that difficult to achieve with a sensible interface (it also reminds me of https://squoosh.app/)

Fundamentally, when you take dozens of photos in a day, they are likely to be all slightly different in terms of crop.

As I had done some work with facial feature recognition, my friend asked if the same tech could be used for his problem... and here's why FaceCrop came to be :-)

How does it work:

- drop in your photos

- FaceCrop detects faces using face-api.js or tracking.js

- FaceCrop suggests crops

- fine-tune the crops individually or globally

- export the crops in a .zip file.

To note, everything runs client-side on the browser: no uploads, no server-side, no accounts. It was mostly developed using some code I had from a previous project and some Claude Code.

Would welcome constructive feedback most importantly on the crop adjustment UI/UX, but also on the detection accuracy, suggested crop shape, etc.

http://facecrop.puntofisso.net/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959297

Points: 1

# Comments: 3

This is a very minor development which serves two personal purposes:

* test whether I could create a simple app with vibe-coding (using Claude Code) and little interaction other than testing * fulfil a personal user need that the existing alternatives (such as https://wordcounter.net/ or select-and-count on MS Word/Google Docs) didn't quite capture in the way I needed.

If you're curious, my use case was writing an application that required an exact overall count, but split unequally among 4 sections.

Comments, feedback, questions, feature requests, unlikely monetisation ideas – all very welcome.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45252540

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Long story short: I had a bit of a fixation with political data wrangling.

This got me two really odd personal successes (excuse the slightly blowing of my own trumpet here, for story's sake): an app [1] that takes UK Parliament debate transcripts and makes an interactive n-gram analysis, similar to Google Books N-gram viewer, which was used by Robert Peston's political show on national TV and the press in the UK (e.g. on the Financial Times [2] and the Sunday Times [3]); then I did a quasi-viral blog post that used code to calculate the average face of a British MP [4], which got me a few contracts, including one with the BBC for the same thing in the US Congress [5]

When I say sideways, what I mean is that the interesting thing is that the jobs I got when using these as examples were not hands-on data wrangling jobs (in fact, they are terribly dirty pieces of code, but that's another story). What they got me is two things: from a technical perspective, the ability to see an end-to-end process to create a product, the running of a service no matter how small for a decade, the use of cutting-edge technology; from a broader point of view, they were great to show me catching the zeitgeist, seeing stories in data, engaging with national media. Both were incredibly "catchy" stories to tell during an interview, and even when challenged (my recent employers being in the public sector) they allowed me to explain myself and my journey.

So, in summary, I love how these two one-day hacks turned into great interview stories, beyond the very minor direct income that they got me.

Aside from the ability to blow my own trumpet a little, the broader applicable lesson here is that by working on something you have a passion for, no matter how geeky it might be, you can build something simple and not necessarily super tidied up, that will however be a good prompt to discuss both your technical and non-technical skills.

I've coached a few candidates for interviews in the intervening years, especially people in tech roles, and it strikes me how often they play down their own side project, which are sometimes much way technically better than mine and with some pretty good stories around the initial motivation and use examples.

[1] https://parli-n-grams.puntofisso.net/

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/d9db05e7-bb1c-4f38-9a02-bd6b66c9c...

[3] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mps-are-becoming-more-loc...

[4] https://puntofisso.medium.com/i-calculated-the-average-face-...

[5] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171018-this-is-the-face...

But I would do three things (some of which I see mentioned in several post below):

1. download as much as you can – wikipedia, stackexchange (e.g. https://archive.org/download/stackexchange), openstreetmap; possibly, set up a local wifi router to allow others to access these and, if you keep it technical, it might be that this will enable you to get in touch with others with similar needs, which should keep you learning together as much as possible

2. if the conditions allow, try and get your hands on StarLink. Getting a dish and router might be problematic. But if you like diy and assuming you can actually sign up to it, it should be possible to self-build a connection kit using spare parts and an ordinary sat dish.

...which brings me to...

3. consider getting into ham radio. This, once again, depends on the situation in the country, and whether licensing is an option or not. But, providing you can and that you have electricity, this could get you in touch with others, who will usually be techies and may be able to also answer coding questions (although this is a willingly long stretch). And, albeit at very low speed, Internet via ham radio is itself a possibility, e.g. https://spectrum.ieee.org/build-a-longdistance-data-network-...

All the best to you, and I hope the situation improves quickly!

What's really stuck with me is that it seems that anti-fraud legislation in many countries allows PayPal and, most importantly, traditional banks to accuse a customer of fraud and close their account without having to provide the actual reason that triggered the anti-fraud checks.

It's not just Stripe by the way: I had my own issue with PayPal (luckily, not very serious as I only had $8 in the account): https://puntofisso.medium.com/paypal-closed-my-account-with-.... And, famously here in the UK, Richard Davey had the same with a high street bank, HSBC: https://medium.com/@photonstorm/hsbc-is-killing-my-business-....

Most of these incidents are caused by entirely misplaced anti-fraud regulation, which is based on assumptions that come from a different era in which transaction were mostly national, mostly predictable, mostly referring to a set of easy-to-understand products and services.

I wonder if what we need is to advocate for new policies and regulations with our respective national legislators.

I can't trust any reviews after this. The major issue is that the review system is flawed. One odd bad review should not affect the overall standing of a business, so even assuming a review was flawed they should leave it on; if they don't, it means that the whole review framework is wrong somehow because statistically gives power where it shouldn't.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34136989

Points: 3

# Comments: 3

Which makes me wonder – maybe a simple, overlooked way, to start side hustles is to replicate a service, but offer better pricing that works for niche/bootstrapped contributors, as opposed to creating niche versions of the service?

In the remote world, it's going to be difficult to address, but it's happened also in the old physical world — albeit less frequently.