Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

I just quit my "day job" to work on a business I've built with some good friends! We make stingray-resistant booties -- ie, if you encounter stingrays in the shallows, these greatly reduce the chance you get stung (https://mydragonskin.com/). I'll be in charge of a couple marketing efforts, helping with Youtube, and other odd things that come up!

My day job required me to go into office frequently, and I'm really feeling the reduced social connection of being fully remote in a small company. Any suggestions how to deal with this? I'm planning to reconnect with old friends, surf a lot, go rock climbing, and maybe take dance / music / other classes. Would also love if anyone wants to work together in the same place (library, coffee shop, etc). I'm in Escondido California, but happy to drive ~30 min to meet folks.

Classes and workshops, something with the same people that occurs over several weeks. But it’s important that the content is something you’re personally interested in.

Legend!!! My buddy just got stung the other week.

Check out Eventship. Hussein is local to SD. You should also meet Fred for press.

I’ll try and remember about these in the winter. I need new booties anyways. How many mm? 2 plus 2 so 4?

https://eventship.com/

Oooh thanks, will check it out!

Ya exactly, 2 layers of 2mm each, for a total of 4mm. They’re less warm than most 4mm booties would be though, because they’re intended for the protection. If you’re in SoCal that’s a feature — your feet should stay warm but not overheat :)

But you could use this boot anywhere you see sharp objects, right? Need not be stingray. Assuming this is the first use case, wish you all the best!

It will help, but the bootie really is fine-tuned to stingrays, in some ways that might not be obvious. Stingrays strike with limited strength, so we measured tons of stingray strikes and designed to stop that. It won’t do much if you put all your weight onto a nail or something.

But if you want a balance of flexibility and stopping stingray stings, we really are the best. Nobody else is even trying, lol, the other options pretty much do nothing, or are encased in steel and not flexible at all.

Would this work for Weever fish? My father in law was stung while walking the beach last year in Portugal, and I've been looking for some sort of sea shoes to bring with us since

Portuguese here, I know people that wear Crocs for that reason.

I have been lucky and haven't been stung in 30yrs of going to the beach here. As far as I know it's a bigger danger when the water is warm, but this might be just a myth.

This is my first time hearing about weever fish! Reading about them online, my best guess is that yes, our booties probably would work for them! The mechanism is very similar to stingrays, and they are a similar size to the ones we test with (round rays, about dinner plate size). To be clear, we haven’t explicitly tested with weever fish, so it is just my best guess.