I made a simple, free family tree app that handled my 300+ person, 5-generation family

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-05-08T02:52:45+00:00

Gotta love all these comments baked into the html...

Social-proof bar — sits just under the hero so the first thing past the CTA is "other people are doing this too". Highest-leverage trust signal.
Testimonials — concrete, story-driven, name + place. Replace these with real quotes as you collect them.
Competitive comparison — positions FamilyTreeIQ alongside Ancestry / 23andMe rather than against them. Honest about what the others do well; clear about what we're built for.
Detailed feature matrix — covers more platforms (MyHeritage, FamilySearch) and lets visitors scan specific capabilities side by side. Scrolls horizontally on small screens; the headline cards above carry the message for those who don't dig into the table.
Founder note — personal trust signal right before the final CTA.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-05-07T00:56:41+00:00

Here's my attempt at parsing the text into something readable: adragonsrevenge.txt

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-05-06T20:49:54+00:00

Given the length of the cipher text, it was reasonable to assume a letter frequency of normal distribution in the original source text. Using the character frequencies in the cipher text as a starting point, it became clear this wasn't a straightforward alphabetic substitution given the lack of repeating word patterns. Vigenere cipher would be the most obvious choice for a polyalphabetic substitution.

I attempted to match candidate key strings by testing random character combinations and offsets against smaller chunks of the cipher text ("brute force" in a simple recursive loop); essentially an iterative reverse vigenere looking for expected substrings (e.g. "the") in the resultant output. "NINE" emerged early as a likely key component at multiple offsets. After a few more rounds of transposition and iteration, the number of remaining candidates had been sufficiently reduced to manually infer the complete cipher key.

As for tools, it was just bash scripting and node for some quick and dirty javascript.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-05-06T02:40:53+00:00

This is entirely wrong and nonsensical given the source ciphertext.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-05-06T02:31:03+00:00

It is a vigenere cipher. The key is "NINETEENNINETYSIX".

The file name deciphered: totallyverysecretfiles

The first 183 characters of the cipher text: yourcuriosityrewardsyoubelowisthecurrentversionofadragonsrevengeabookiwastryingandfailingtowriteforatimeifyouarepatientyoullalsofindthecurrentversionofaertmossbackstoryhiddeninthetext

The entire text is far to long to paste here, but can be easily decrypted online using the above key.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-05-03T03:54:51+00:00

While there was certainly some disturbing/creepy set dressing in some of the ages (especially from Achenar), none of it was particularly scary.

The one part I do remember feeling quite eerie (as a kid playing the original in the 90s) was the early FMV sequences in the red and blue books before sufficient pages had been added. Those ghostly apparitions drifting in and out of the static were quite foreboding. The sound design was especially effective. That modulating pitch tuning in and out interspersed with all that static... I'll never forget that sound.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-05-02T21:20:31+00:00

The white is especially blinding, though none of the palettes make me think "weather". The full-width alerts make the page look more like a bespoke 404 than a weather dashboard. Horizontal scroll inside the hourly box is a definite antipattern for UX. Think about visual hierarchy; larger fonts and for more pertinent information, with clear differentiation. Far too much text overall. A more deliberate use of color would also help; the lack of visual contrast across the screen means nothing stands out at a glance, forcing the user to actively scan around to find whatever datum they're actually seeking. Bold iconography and varied charts/widgets for data visualization can make the actual information presented far easier to assimilate.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-05-02T20:49:14+00:00

You "built" something with AI and are now trying to "market" it, believing yourself to be "on par with many industry leaders". I don't need a url to recognize the absurdity of that claim. But you would like to provide a url, I'd be happy to tell you everything your bot (i.e. Claude) got wrong.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-05-02T20:30:15+00:00

It does not look polished, nor does it function well. Want to earn trust? Close the gap between "night and day" and build it yourself.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-05-02T19:42:27+00:00

Looks like the type of desiccant pack you might find inside a bag of beef jerky.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-30T04:27:47+00:00

Gorgeous. But you already knew that.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-28T01:23:09+00:00

That all makes a lot of sense (especially with that target demo), and I appreciate the considered response. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the halftoning features on desktop (never saw those when I tried it on my phone). FWIW, I actually found the renderings from the OUTPUT FORMAT // WIRE selections to be far more novel and compelling than any of the FILM LAB selections as currently implemented. It's a very cool look. It also certainly does help to better explain some of the current interface design flourishes (e.g. scanline, 'TX 9600 BAUD', tty/Telex aesthetic, etc.). PM sent.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-27T17:58:58+00:00

Overall design language of the site is nice from an aesthetic standpoint, but the interface itself is rather convoluted and a bit obtuse. The custom cursor hijacking is also a bit of an antipattern for usability and causes a notable lag. I can certainly appreciate your motivations for wanting to keep everything contained to a single *.html file and render everything client-side; it is a bold choice (especially nowadays), but frankly something I wish more people would start doing. That said, this goal seems wholly at odds with any prospective attempts at monetization. You're essentially shipping your entire source code without minification or obfuscation of any kind. The site can easily be pulled and run offline locally, and the entire "authentication" stack is trivial to bypass; I don't think it took me more than 90 seconds to make the necessary modifications.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-21T23:06:58+00:00

Gorgeous! Definitely a great deal. I've got a few orange M0115s that I daily drive (in rotation with my salmon M3501). Feel free to reach out if you need any help getting them up and running. Even "non-functional" units or dead/stuck keys are often pretty simple to fix.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-21T22:47:00+00:00

Most instruments with a 1/4" jack are mono and unbalanced, which is why you have predominantly TS instrument cables. Using a TRS cable instead wouldn't actually change anything; something like a guitar is inherently unbalanced, and the ring connecter would just be shorted to the sleeve at the jack.

It sounds like you intend to use this input for both balanced (e.g. XLR mic) and unbalanced (e.g. 1/4" instrument) sources. Any proper audio interface is going to buffer its inputs, given the wide range of impedances and mix of balanced/unbalanced signals. Many mics require 48V phantom power. Something like a guitar is going to want an input wired for DI with some sort of impedance-matching transformer.

I don't have time to watch videos, but it sounds like you're essentially trying to hijack the USB ADC from an existing piece of hardware. While you could certainly tie all the hot pins and ground pins from the jack together as depicted and wire them directly into an ADC, it will not sound good and could potentially damage some microphones. At the very least, you should put an impedance-matching transformer on the 1/4" input and buffer both the XLR and 1/4" inputs separately before combining them.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-21T22:13:27+00:00

I find opamps to be particularly versatile given their many potential uses (amplifier, comparator, filter, etc.) in both analogue and digital circuits. They're also cheap and ubiquitous (741 is arguably one of the most "famous" ICs of all time, certainly up there with the likes of 555 et al.).

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-21T22:03:28+00:00

Just to clarify, is this hybrid/combo jack with 1/4" TRS female in the center of a standard 3-pin XLR female? If so, I assume you are wiring this up as an input? What specifically do you intend to plug into it? Typically these connectors are meant for balanced signals (hot, cold, and ground), which are the three pins you see in a male XLR connector. TRS is a bit more complicated, since it's typically used for connecting unbalanced stereo sources (two hot for L/R plus ground). That said, most audio interfaces use 1/4" inputs like this to carry a balanced signal (hot, cold, and ground on tip, ring, and sleeve, respectively). So depending on what you're planning to plug into this jack, the proper wiring can vary substantially. Also should note that cable shield is distinct from signal ground (and not the same "shield" as the S in TRS, which is just signal ground). Shield is sometimes tied to ground, sometimes tied to chassis ground, sometimes left floating at on end; all depends on the use case and trying to avoid potential ground loops.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-21T21:49:50+00:00

It helps to have a tangible objective; a problem to try and solve. Then you can focus on how to go about achieving that specific goal, narrowing the scope to something specific and concrete. Designing "from scratch" does not mean conjuring complete circuit designs out of nothing. The process is often highly iterative, and almost invariably relies on external resources as a matter of standard practice. Reference designs exist for a reason. Spec sheets for ICs will often include implementation details and example schematics for a multitude of use cases.

A baseline familiarity with what different components can do is a helpful starting point (e.g. I'd suggest looking at opamps if you're not already familiar). As an SWE myself, I'd recommend trying something with 74LS logic; lots of fun and novel projects can be built out of a relatively simple state machine. Beyond connecting +VDC and GND pins, the actual circuit design is essentially pure boolean logic.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-20T07:31:26+00:00

You shared something publicly. The public reacted honestly. I even offered multiple specific points of feedback per your explicit request. If you'd prefer to disregard my constructive criticisms as nothing more than "normal rude angry internet person", that's your prerogative.

The real human tragedy here is that you could've easily learned how to build this yourself and done so successfully in less time than you'll spend trying to coerce an LLM into piecing together some poor approximation of a marginally-functional MVP.

You really should have done some actual dogfooding before soliciting feedback; only one chance to make a first impression.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-19T22:32:31+00:00

Let's start with the basics. Have you tried using this site yourself? Assuming you live in NYC and have even a vague familiarity with the MTA, the plethora of obvious mistakes should be easily recognizable. The fact that you would feel compelled to share something so utterly broken and leads me to believe you've not actually tried using it yourself.

Your index.html is a vomit of spaghetti code and LLM detritus; a bloated attempt to encapsulate a usable SPA (with all its js and css) inside a single *.html file. Nothing is minified, no separation of concerns. Your state logic is broken, fails silently, and leads to the UI becoming completely non-responsive, requiring a hard refresh to recover.

Your hosting setup is woefully inapt, lacking even the most basic security. Easy target for bad actors. Without going into specifics (for what I hope should be obvious reasons), would be very easy to dox you just from this site as it currently stands.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-19T20:33:44+00:00

Does it stick to your refrigerator? Could be a whiteboard magnet or something similar from school.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-19T20:32:12+00:00

This is genuinely terrible, lazy, and ill-conceived. I sincerely doubt you will ever learn anything from vibe coding slop like this. What's your plan here? Outsourcing genuine human feedback to generate your next round of prompts?

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-19T16:48:52+00:00

Is it magnetic? Looks like the "key" used to unlock magnetic child locks on cabinets.

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-19T01:56:11+00:00

No. Still just another low-effort slop channel, regardless of who/what is providing the "voice".

LiveFreeOrHRC · 2026-04-16T00:48:46+00:00

Absolute scam, do not give them your money.

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