DataOverload.net – A Community for Science Enthusiasts

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DataOverload.net – A Community for Science Enthusiasts

Hello HN community, I'm lmx, and I'm excited to share with you my latest pet project, DataOverload.net. My intention was to create a website where members of scientific communities can share their research, books, scientific news, articles, courses, tutorials, and more. The website allows members to vote and discuss content, and similar posts are grouped into boards (aka focus groups), which contains materials related to the specific topic. It is essentially a clone of Reddit but exclusively for science enthusiasts, and currently, it is a bit biased towards computer graphics and sciences. As someone who spends a lot of time reading research papers for work, I found that everything was scattered across different platforms. I wanted to create a place where people could easily find scientific content and discuss it, and with that idea in mind, DataOverload.net was born. It all started when I found the source code for a dead Reddit clone (ruqqus). Although I had no experience with backend/frontend programming and I wanted to learn web dev, I found the code reasonably easy and self-contained to start with. Despite some learning curve, once I got the first bits up and running, the thought occurred to me - why not make something useful out of it? And that's when the idea for DataOverload.net was born... The development process took me a few weeks, starting in October 2022. I worked in my spare time during late evenings, nights, and weekends. The website is written in Django, HTML/Bootstrap, and some JavaScript, and PostgreSQL is the database of choice. It runs on AWS EC2, using Nginx/Gunicorn, and S3 buckets to store media and user files. The project is entirely self-funded, so I try to be as efficient as possible (currently I'm the only dev). DataOverload.net has several features, including upvoting for posts and comments, topic-related groups called boards, a reading list, tags, markdown support, mathjax for math equations, and code highlighting. Users can also earn SP points for voting and posting. I have several planned features in the pipeline, such as user feeds, jobs, backlinks to track the relationship between posts, PDF parsing, and more. However, at this stage, I'm looking for feedback, comments, and any help that the community can offer. In conclusion, I hope that DataOverload.net can become a valuable resource for science enthusiasts, researchers, and anyone interested in the latest scientific news and research. Please feel free to check out the website and let me know your thoughts. Thanks lmx