What does HackerNews think of ld-decode?

> Lots of truth to this. Just start building. Build for yourself and real people, not imagined profiles of people.

I've been doing this for years and all it has done is drill me further down into super-niche rabbit holes that the majority of people don't care about.

I mention this because I see this kind of advice all the time on here, but it so often comes bundled with the unwritten assumption that the kinds of things the reader will build won't stray too far from the mainstream.

After more than a decade of "building", I can state with confidence that profitable ideas don't spring up from countless hours invested in building e.g. a better comb filter for NTSC.

The reality of the situation is that if your interests are things like "doing cool stuff with AI" or "SaaSify yet another thing" or "shoehorn Merkle trees into yet another square hole", then this advice will likely work for you.

If you're the kind of dude (not me) to write ld-decode¹, then it will likely not.

I mean, shit, Donald Graft² has been "building" far longer than I have and yet none of his "building" has led to a business AFAICT.

[1] https://github.com/happycube/ld-decode

[2] https://www.rationalqm.us/mine.html

They owe you nothing, so if you want to figure something out, searching the web is your best chance.

Also, how is it not clear what the project is? First thing I see from the submission link:

> Software defined VHS decoder

> A fork of LD-Decode, the decoding software powering the Domesday86 Project

Which links to https://github.com/happycube/ld-decode and https://www.domesday86.com/

> Software defined LaserDisc decoder

and

> Domesday86 is a project that aims to recreate the experience of the original BBC Domesday project using modern hardware and software

Which leads me to searching what BBC Domesday is, as I didn't know:

> The BBC Domesday Project was a partnership between Acorn Computers, Philips, Logica, and the BBC to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th-century census of England. It has been cited as an example of digital obsolescence on account of the physical medium used for data storage.

Not sure why everything has to be made for/explained as it's made for literally everyone. Some software is for a niche section of programmers/developers/$niche-group, that's perfectly fine. If you're curious, use a search engine like the rest of us.

Also, if you're interested, there is a robust community around re-creating the Domesday project with modern hardware [0], as well as capturing LDs via the player's raw RF output, using both bespoke hardware [1] and off-the-shelf [2], then decoding the output in software [3].

[0]: https://www.domesday86.com

[1]: https://github.com/simoninns/DomesdayDuplicator/wiki

[2]: https://github.com/happycube/cxadc-linux3

[3]: https://github.com/happycube/ld-decode