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Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

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Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#181

Post by dane-pgp »

webmaven wrote: post #169
dane-pgp wrote: post #69

Someone needs to solve online identity and reputation (in a privacy-preserving way) so that you can accumulate trust on one site/service and carry that over to another. Ideally such a system shouldn't devolve into trusting just a few large American corporations to decide who is and isn't allowed an online existence. It feels like we can't have nice things because if you want to put a user-editable resource online, yo…

> Someone needs to solve online identity and reputation (in a privacy-preserving way) so that you can accumulate trust on one site/service and carry that over to another. The problem is that most of the existing ways of transferring reputation (or the appearance of it) between contexts result in opportunities for arbitrage: celebrity endorsements, scientists supporting theories outside of their field, con artists lev…

> transferring reputation ... between contexts

The problem is, the systems we have today don't put walls between contexts but between implementations.

If someone is a famous actor, and they have millions of followers on Twitter, then they can tweet out some hot take on vaccines and all their followers will see that. However, if a scientist has a lot of followers on Twitter, but wants to move their account over to Mastodon, they have to start from scratch and lose their audience.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#182

Post by w10-1 »

Anything that gets people to really see beyond their limited scope.

7B people now, another 20B in our children's lifetime.

We're attuned to what bothers us (software introspection, social network garbage). 10 days of just sitting will show you your emotional concerns are meaningless delusions.

Meanwhile, the forces that determine actual lives - availability of food, housing, health care, transportation, energy; education, rights and corruption, political capture; cultural goodwill and compassion - go largely unseen, mainly driven by people seeking power.

The doomsday clock is mono-dimensional. We need a world dashboard we can all agree upon and fight over. Once it's measured, people can optimize it.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#183

Post by thirdwhrldPzz »

yojo wrote: post #127
perlgeek wrote: post #109

One thing we see over and over again leading to social injustice is the externalization of costs. Examples: * burning fossil fuels externalizes the cost of dealing with climate change * during the housing market crash of 2007, lots of risks were ultimately externalized to the state * plastic waste ending up in the ocean means somebody[tm] externalized the cost of not properly disposing of / recycling their waste ...…

I’d love to see that software too, but most of the issues you describe (plastics, greenhouse gasses) had impacts that were non-obvious at the outset. Then they were controversial, then no longer controversial but heavily lobbied. At the start of the industrial revolution no one knew about global warming. Then the science came out but was lobbied against. Now the science is (mostly) accepted, but we still don’t know c…

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#184

Post by teknopaul »

perlgeek wrote: post #109

One thing we see over and over again leading to social injustice is the externalization of costs. Examples: * burning fossil fuels externalizes the cost of dealing with climate change * during the housing market crash of 2007, lots of risks were ultimately externalized to the state * plastic waste ending up in the ocean means somebody[tm] externalized the cost of not properly disposing of / recycling their waste ...…

One not very good but simple approach is to tax.

If you tax power consumption you let market forces prioritise low power solutions. US is against that for gas, but it works.

As for plàstics you can do the same, tax plastic users presuming it end ups in the ocean and give tax breaks to those that find ways to prevent it and prove they have done so. Again this uses market forces to let individual enterprises find solutions for their own use of plastics. If consumers are price conscious they will chose greener alternatives due to their own cost.

Taxing corps profits is too easy for them to avoid.

Another advantage of using taxation to regulate green issues is that you get a load of money to spend on clean up operations.

There is no need for Software, you need a majority of voters who care enough to be willing to pay for their environmental damage.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#185

Post by lumannnn »

lumannnn wrote: post #62

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf - "Bitcoin & Renewable Energy Transition - Bitcoin Incentivizes Green Energy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SX1eCqwd3Q - "Can Bitcoin Mining Save the Environment? with Troy Cross" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFYKq5Qe1Bs - "This Machine Greens" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-7dMVcVWgc

- "Bitcoin’s Clean Energy Revolution with Nic Carter & Troy Cross" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu156PvA-NI

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#186

Post by dane-pgp »

timeon wrote: post #118
kapsteur wrote: post #49

Ethereum ?

Is it still PoW?

"Ethereum 2.0 with Proof of Stake (PoS) could be launched in June this year. After the launch of Kiln, which is considered the last testnet before the final launch, there was speculation that the merger ... leading up to the final arrival of Ethereum 2.0, will arrive in mid-2022."

https://investmentbusinessu.com/2022/03/16/ethereum-2-0-appe...

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#187

Post by teknopaul »

perlgeek wrote: post #109

One thing we see over and over again leading to social injustice is the externalization of costs. Examples: * burning fossil fuels externalizes the cost of dealing with climate change * during the housing market crash of 2007, lots of risks were ultimately externalized to the state * plastic waste ending up in the ocean means somebody[tm] externalized the cost of not properly disposing of / recycling their waste ...…

It's pretty easy to track the lifetime of some equipment. (not yogurt cartons, but Internet conneted equipment is trivial) You can empower users to make the right decisions, by collecting and publishing lifetime information at the point of sale.

This enables consumers to see that one phone is, for example, 50% more expensive but if its reusable (right to repair comes in here) and has a life time twice that of the comparable device. Consumers can make the right decision. Its really important to log the miles and age of cars as they get sold so that consumers don't buy cars that end up being replaced too early. Second hand markets will reflect that knowledge once its collated and published and market forces do the rest. You ought to regulate to ensure that facts once known are presented to consumers by suppliers. In theory, with perfect knowledge, and consumers that care, the market regulates itself. Anything you do to improve consumer knowledge and encourage responsibility helps.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#188

Post by dane-pgp »

yodsanklai wrote: post #99
loudmax wrote: post #50

So many communication platforms are proprietary walled gardens these days. Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Discord, and so on. Their incentives do not align with what's best for their users, or society in general. We absolutely need open solutions become the standard dominant medium for communicating. If Matrix and Mastodon become as easy to use as their proprietary counterparts, they could undo much of the harm done by ou…

> they could undo much of the harm done by our culturally divisive "social" networks. Or it could be worse. Meta/Twitter spend a lot of resource to moderate content for a reason. I don't see how a decentralised model could solve the problem of content moderation.

It's worth checking out the approach being considered by Matrix[0] which should make the solutions scalable and thus affordable. Empowering users and communities to distribute and delegate their moderation decisions seems like it will enable more innovation, rather than users being stuck with a "one size fits no one" regime.

[0] https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-in-matrix...

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#189

Post by teknopaul »

duped wrote: post #140
yojo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d love to see that software too, but most of the issues you describe (plastics, greenhouse gasses) had impacts that were non-obvious at the outset. Then they were controversial, then no longer controversial but heavily lobbied. At the start of the industrial revolution no one knew about global warming. Then the science came out but was lobbied against. Now the science is (mostly) accepted, but we still don’t know c…

I don't know how software can be used to fix any of the "big" problems other than as an avenue for information and manipulation through social media. Like for example we know that if we want to do anything about climate change we probably need to change our diets. I don't know how we can convince anyone to do that except through questionable means like social media campaigns.

Software is good at one thing processing information. Anything you can do to improve information about environmental damage of products helps. For example CO2 emissions of vehicles are published. But not the CO2 cost of making the vehicle. People buying new cars don't know what the CO2 impact of a new car is, at the point of sale. If you can use software to get that information in front of consumers, it helps people make the right choices. If people don't make the right choices with good information, use the information gathered to proportionally tax the products because even selfish consumers can read the price tag.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#190

Post by rg111 »

dane-pgp wrote: post #188
yodsanklai wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they could undo much of the harm done by our culturally divisive "social" networks. Or it could be worse. Meta/Twitter spend a lot of resource to moderate content for a reason. I don't see how a decentralised model could solve the problem of content moderation.

It's worth checking out the approach being considered by Matrix[0] which should make the solutions scalable and thus affordable. Empowering users and communities to distribute and delegate their moderation decisions seems like it will enable more innovation, rather than users being stuck with a "one size fits no one" regime. [0] https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-in-matrix...

> Empowering users and communities to distribute and delegate their moderation

So, basically what Reddit does.

This leads to the creation of echo-chambers where the power is at the hand of select few.

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