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Ask HN: What are some problems solved in unrelated domains?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some problems solved in unrelated domains?

#11

Post by nwsm »

jclem wrote: post #5
deanebarker wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like QR codes failed as a general UI tool. I get annoyed whenever I have to deal with one. They wee HUGE about 10 years ago. Now, not so much.

I don’t know about other places, but they’re getting a lot of use in NYC right now as a method for viewing restaurant menus for outdoor dining.

They also inspired similar usage for looking up a profile/resource in Snapchat, Spotify, Venmo, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What are some problems solved in unrelated domains?

#13

Post by social_quotient »

jclem wrote: post #5
deanebarker wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like QR codes failed as a general UI tool. I get annoyed whenever I have to deal with one. They wee HUGE about 10 years ago. Now, not so much.

I don’t know about other places, but they’re getting a lot of use in NYC right now as a method for viewing restaurant menus for outdoor dining.

Here (Austin) it’s used in movie theaters that had seat food ordering and I gotta say thee execution is flawless now that the camera has a built in QR.

I think if QR could start over again and have support from the camera without the user needing to figure an app to use/get etc. things might have been different.

Re: Ask HN: What are some problems solved in unrelated domains?

#14

Post by zupatol »

The black-scholes model for pricing options had a big impact on the financial industry, and the big breakthrough for solving the equation was to realize it could be turned into the heat equation that already had a solution. If I remember well, the insight came to Robert Merton, an economist who had also studied engineering mathematics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes_model

Re: Ask HN: What are some problems solved in unrelated domains?

#15

Post by faizshah »

If you look in the field of network analysis there’s several camps of researchers, namely: physicists, sociologists, mathematicians and computer scientists all solving the same problems but from different domains with different terms and drawing from different prior work. They all interestingly converge in the sub field of community detection or graph clustering.

Re: Ask HN: What are some problems solved in unrelated domains?

#16

Post by 3np »

deanebarker wrote: post #4
axegon_ wrote: post #2

A real popular one would be QR codes. They were initially created to track manufacturing processes in the automotive industry. And you know how it is these days...

I feel like QR codes failed as a general UI tool. I get annoyed whenever I have to deal with one. They wee HUGE about 10 years ago. Now, not so much.

In Paris, most restaurants I visited recently have now done away with paper menus due to COVID and instead have QR codes on each table for the menus.

Also Japan, being one of the earliest adopters, is still big on QR codes.

And of course anything involving mobile and cryptocurrency transactions. And mobile payments in most of South and South East Asia.

Re: Ask HN: What are some problems solved in unrelated domains?

#20

Post by mcintyre1994 »

deanebarker wrote: post #4
axegon_ wrote: post #2

A real popular one would be QR codes. They were initially created to track manufacturing processes in the automotive industry. And you know how it is these days...

I feel like QR codes failed as a general UI tool. I get annoyed whenever I have to deal with one. They wee HUGE about 10 years ago. Now, not so much.

I find them pretty easy to deal with now, they used to be annoying when you needed a specific app to scan them though.
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