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Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

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Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#241

Post by dane-pgp »

fabianlindfors wrote: post #167
dane-pgp wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Privacy friendly Does this mean that a user can use their identity on two separate sites, and those two sites can't collude to build a shared profile of the user, without the user's permission? Does the user have to choose a specific server to be involved in all their identity interactions? If the server stops working, does the user lose their identity? Also, is it possible to create an account without a phone (or…

> Does this mean that a user can use their identity on two separate sites, and those two sites can't collude to build a shared profile of the user, without the user's permission? That's precisely what it means. User IDs will be unique for each site and I'm hoping to anonymize email addresses as well, similar to what Apple has done for "Sign in with Apple". Some companies might be required by law to collect some PII b…

Thank you for those excellent answers. I do have a couple more questions if you are interested:

> [companies'] needs will be vetted before.

Is the plan that a single entity offering this centralized product will control not just which users are allowed to have identities, but which companies are allowed to access users' IDs? Presumably there is a somewhat costly process to vetting companies and their requirements, so would companies pay a fixed amount to cover this vetting process, or pay more based on the level of personal information they hoped to receive from users?

> the prospect of decentralized, verified identities is also very interesting.

What type of verification do you imagine being necessary or available for user identities?

> The current product is in the form of an app so you will need a phone but you won't need a phone number (or SIM).

Are there any technologies specific to phones that mean this couldn't run as a web app instead?

> My current system assumes one identity per person but it's fully possible to have multiple devices which acts as that identity.

So if you can install multiple copies of the app on your (Android) phone, you could have multiple identities on the same device?

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#242

Post by ohnope »

erwinh wrote: post #114

1: trying to build tools to give people a more tacit understanding of sattelites & space debris: https://space-search.io 2: developing easy-to-use tools for parametric generative design to enable hyper-personalisation: https://hyperobjects.design

You’re probably already aware of it, but for generative design tool inspiration check out Grasshopper. It’s for building geometric algorithmic designs based on various inputs and constraints. It also has some tools for exploring permutations / genetic algorithms.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#243

Post by genuinebyte »

isaacimagine wrote: post #140
cryo wrote: post #123

Private file access between computers. Even in 2020 it appears that building a connection between machines (macOS, Linux and Windows) requires a miracle if you don't like to share everything with cloud providers. cryo file mangager is an attempt to get rid of the hassle: https://cryonet.io

There's also syncthing: https://syncthing.net/ .

I've recently setup Syncthing and it worked great. I'd appreciate if it allowed me to cut out all relays and just connect directly to my servers, but maybe I just haven't found out how to do that yet.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#244

Post by TimJRobinson »

easterncalculus wrote: post #181
chiefmcloud wrote: post #153

I’m working on a new way to talk online, with the goal of killing cancel culture, increasing understanding, and basically calming down current radicalization. Picture Reddit, but with the ability to anonymously share ideas with other people in your social circles. My theory is that most reasonable people stay off social media, so places like Twitter end up filled with unreasonable narcissists. At the same time, discu…

This is a great idea. I would love to use a service like this. One of the downsides of anonymity that many people raise (fallaciously) as an argument against it is that too many of the anonymous people are just trolls, therefore it is a negative quality. Having it be people that are known to the person brings about an assumption of character that can solve this issue, so long as the user associates with people that t…

I've been thinking about the gab problem a lot and have a solution: moderation and votes should be user centric rather than wisdom of the crowd based. Explained further here: https://adecentralizedworld.com/2020/06/a-trust-and-moderati...

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#245

Post by a1369209993 »

adamsea wrote: post #164
wiseleo wrote: post #29

Education. Schools are functionally no different from part-time prisons. You must attend daily under penalty of law. Many teachers are plain awful. They rely on students being additionally taught by their parents. That forces parents to go to school with their children, which perpetuates the vicious cycle. The teacher recalibrates the class to the students who either understood everything the first time or had supple…

I certainly agree that so much about school is problematic and could be improved, but ... > Schools are functionally no different from part-time prisons. A prison by definition cannot be part-time ; ). Plus, it's a totally unfair comparison. Schools are intended for everyone. Prisons are intended for a specific subset of people deemed to have broken a law. Schools are for children. Prisons are for adults. And so on.

> Prisons are intended for a specific subset of people

> Schools are for children. [a specific subset of people]

Bills of attainder[0] may be illegal and unconstitutional, but they're still a thing that happens as long as noone who matters cares.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#246

Post by warpech »

janee wrote: post #128

Collaborative spreadsheets on your desktop using browser based native file system API. Basically google spreadsheets but not google and not spreadsheets in a webapp. Haven't done any coding on it, but have been mulling the design for several months now.

Shameless plug, doing this for networking not advertisement. My company has several (open and non-open source) web-based products for parsing and rendering of spreadsheet files and execution of formulas. Please get in touch if you'd like me to tell more.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#247

Post by wittyreference »

redis_mlc wrote: post #8
solresol wrote: post #4

Dentistry: can we replace dental x-rays with infrared? Can we build optical panographs just using the reflections from a dental mirror? How can we monitor patients' oral health over the long term more often than just an annual visit to the dentist, and does that improve oral health outcomes? Machine learning: what happens when we replace Euclidean metrics with p-adic ones? Distance is fundamental to so many algorithm…

> Dentistry: can we replace dental x-rays with infrared? There's a US company that has an ultrasonic "x-ray". Signal processing is used to find cracks and cavities. It's not well-known yet even to Bay Area specialists.

Do you have a link where I could read more? Because it sounds like you're describing a thing that's been around for like a decade, that I've seen in use in (my region). But I may just be comparing apples and oranges under a too-vague description.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#248

Post by lambdatronics »

Trying to find a solution to the maximum-entropy probability distribution Q(x,y,z) constrained to reproduce the marginal distributions P(x,y), P(y,z), and P(z,x) from some other distribution P(x,y,z).

It is known that Q takes the form Q=a(x,y)b(y,z)c(z,x) for some functions a,b,c to be determined by solving the system of equations:

P(x,y) = sum_z Q(x,y,z)

P(y,z) = sum_x Q(x,y,z)

P(z,x) = sum_y Q(x,y,z)

It's not clear there exists a general closed-form solution. Iterative algorithms are known. This type of problem comes up in a number of interesting contexts. For instance, testing for non-trivial multi-variable interactions in dynamical systems such as neural networks or spin networks, performing joins on probabilistic databases, constructing reduced models of probability distributions, and in some cooperative game theory problems.

Examples: https://www.princeton.edu/~wbialek/our_papers/schneidman+al_...

http://vldb.org/conf/1987/P071.PDF

https://doi.org/10.6028/jres.072b.019

https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/16/4/2161 Edit: formatting

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#249

Post by adeledeweylopez »

rsecora wrote: post #235
jawns wrote: post #170

I hope this counts as weird enough ... PROBLEM: If time travelers from the future were to visit you, it would be difficult for them to quickly prove their authenticity. SOLUTION: Temporal passwords. At the start of each year, you devise a new password. You commit the password to memory, but you never write it down or divulge it to anyone until Dec. 31, when you submit it to the Temporal Password Registry, which publi…

If the time Travelers came from the past instead of the future, the password sharing is useless. maybe they have jump [1] from the past after doing a change that alter your present (their future) trying to fix the future (your present). [1] https://visual.ly/community/Infographics/entertainment/back-...

But we know that is very possible to do already, via relativistic effects.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#250

Post by a1369209993 »

mattjoyce wrote: post #169
wiseleo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am optimistic :) The entire curriculum is extremely easy when properly explained at correct pace.

As a father with a 12 year old struggling with math, to say something is extremely easy makes me think you have a better understanding of math than people.

To be fair, they never said it was easy to figure out how to properly explain it, nor that the right pace was necessarily as fast as anyone involved would like.
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