Over the years I noticed many of my friends collect all kinds of different photos.
One takes a photo whenever he sees an exotic car to share it in a group chat. Another told me and his girlfriend have a passion for traffic cones (apparently there are many different types).
I thought it would be fun to build them an app to collect all of these. And of course, with modern technology, we can cut out the object (i.e. remove the background), automatically identify metadata such as the model, colors, type, etc, and put them on a map to find back later.
That's what Loot is. It's my second ever iPhone app (I built many websites before) and it's completely vibe coded. But I did put in A LOT of effort in not making it look vibe coded. A lot of time was spent polishing the UX to give it character and make it fun to use.
The interactivity of the website gives a good preview of the playfulness of the app.
I already got a ton of good feedback and would love to hear what HN thinks of it and how you could see yourself using it. What features you'd like to see added next, etc.
It's a free download with currently no in-app purchases or subscriptions.
For many years we explicitly denied any startup that was already launched.
This was back in the day where most startups had a long "pre-launch" phase where they would be collecting user feedback through private betas, etc before launching publicly.
I wanted BetaList to be focused on early-stage startups and to avoid a lot of debates about what is and isn't "early-stage" I decided on that clear policy.
We also denied startups for other reasons such as using an over-used homepage template (they never converted well for our audience as they'd see the same one multiple times a week) or simply having a dime-in-a-dozen product (which also didn't get many signups when featured on BetaList).
I built BetaList 16 years ago which was one of the first "product discovery" platforms. Years before Product Hunt, etc.
I manually reviewed every submission and unfortunately often I had to tell founders that their startup didn't qualify to be included. Almost everyone would (understandably!) argue their case, but as volume increased I couldn't afford to go into a deep argument with every single founder.
That's when I made https://submit.co a site similar to OP's. The idea being that instead of say "No, we will not feature your startup" I now gave them an alternative place to put their energy.
Initially it was mostly a list of tech blogs, but as more product discovery platforms popped up, I started adding them too. In a sense, I was promoting my competition but it was exactly the startups we couldn't list any way for one reason or another.
Eventually that list of "places to submit your startup" got so popular (and copied everywhere ) that it started driving traffic back to BetaList. (I included it at the very top of the list).
I reported a vulnerability to them that allowed you to get IP addresses of their paying customers.
OpenAI responded “Not applicable” indicating they don’t think it was a serious issue.
The PoC was very easy to understand and simple to replicate.
Edit: I guess I might as well disclose it here since they don’t consider it an issue. They were/are(?) hot linking logo images of third-party plugins. When you open their plugin store it loads a couple dozen of them instantly. This allows those plugin developers (of which there are many) to track the IP addresses and possibly more of who made these requests. It’s straight forward to become a plugin developer and get included. IP tracking is invisible to the user and OpenAI. A simple fix is to proxy these images and/or cache them on the OpenAI server.
I had my Apple Pro Display XDR stolen from the office in Lisbon, Portugal.
They also stole my AirPods Max which has Find My technology built in.
It happened over the weekend and when I found out about the burglary about 2 days later I checked the Find My app. I saw my AirPods Max was in a small town about 3 hours away from my office.
I informed the police and they said there’s nothing they could do about it due to privacy concerns. Ugh.
I considered going there myself, but it being in a foreign country, not knowing the language, having no transportation, and not knowing what or who I’d find when I arrive, I ultimately decided to not risk it and never ended up going.
A few days later the signal went offline. Months after that it showed up on the map again. It was in Moldova at a shopping mall known for selling electronic parts.
I don’t know what happened to my Apple Pro Display XDR, but if you ever see one for sale in Portugal please send me a message :D
BTW, interesting side story: They didn’t just steal my display and headphones, but also many computers from other offices. Multiple floors except one. I guess they didn’t have time for that one. A week later they came back to rob that other floor as well.
Last year I made the first Stable Diffusion app [1] to redesign your interior (upload a picture of your room, and it restyles it to a different design style).
Last week, GPT-4 Vision was released [2]. It allows developers to upload a picture and ask questions about it.
I figured it would be be a compelling product to get a interior design consultation, by AI.
The feedback is surprisingly detailed and useful. It understand the layout of the room and can give actionable recommendations on how to improve the flow, overall aesthetics, etc.
For people on a budget, it might be a great starting point.
The next step will be to visualize the recommendations with AI (Stable Diffusion) so you get a better sense of what your room could look like.
Arnold kept inspiring people from all walks of life that through hard work you can, in the case of body building quite literally, shape your own reality.
I appreciate that you went the extra mile by showing how a generic enough controller can be used for various use cases.
People coming a from traditional JS background tend to make very specific Stimulus controllers, but when you make them a bit more abstract and modular they become more usable and easier to maintain.
One takes a photo whenever he sees an exotic car to share it in a group chat. Another told me and his girlfriend have a passion for traffic cones (apparently there are many different types).
I thought it would be fun to build them an app to collect all of these. And of course, with modern technology, we can cut out the object (i.e. remove the background), automatically identify metadata such as the model, colors, type, etc, and put them on a map to find back later.
That's what Loot is. It's my second ever iPhone app (I built many websites before) and it's completely vibe coded. But I did put in A LOT of effort in not making it look vibe coded. A lot of time was spent polishing the UX to give it character and make it fun to use.
The interactivity of the website gives a good preview of the playfulness of the app.
I already got a ton of good feedback and would love to hear what HN thinks of it and how you could see yourself using it. What features you'd like to see added next, etc.
It's a free download with currently no in-app purchases or subscriptions.