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Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

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Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#241

Post by Darkskynet »

copperx wrote: post #226
iammjm wrote: post #36

Educational games. Hear me out. The way we teach us basically how we did it 500 years ago. This is stupid, boring and not scalable. We dont have enough teachers, attention span is short, education is costly. So we need something that scales, is fun and involves all types of media plus gamifies education. Think Skyrim or GTA meets MS Encarta

I was watching a Pixar movie and wondered, "what if these resources were spent in creating, say, scientifically accurate animations of biological processes for people who are learning chemistry, anatomy, genetics, etc." We all have seen small animations of processes, but some are inaccurate or simplified due to time and money constraints. I've dreamed about this since I was a kid.

On the topic of 'scientifically accurate animations of biological processes'. You may know of these videos, but I thought these might be worth sharing for others interested in this topic:

Here is a TEDTalk by Drew Berry: Animations of unseeable biology. (uploaded in 2012) https://youtu.be/WFCvkkDSfIU

Here is also a more recent video by Veritasium on YT that also talks about these animations. (uploaded in 2017) https://youtu.be/X_tYrnv_o6A

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#242

Post by ab-dm »

iammjm wrote: post #36

Educational games. Hear me out. The way we teach us basically how we did it 500 years ago. This is stupid, boring and not scalable. We dont have enough teachers, attention span is short, education is costly. So we need something that scales, is fun and involves all types of media plus gamifies education. Think Skyrim or GTA meets MS Encarta

Time to remaster Logical journey of the zoombinis. Such an amazing game.

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#243

Post by dogcomplex »

kjellsbells wrote: post #37
tmaly wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not just knowledge transfer, but knowledge organization. We have so many different ways to represent knowledge, but it is very hard to access it or know where to look. I think better training and investigation into best practices of organizing knowledge would benefit all industries.

Former librarian here, now at a tech co. This is exactly the domain of information science, and its a salutary tale in two industries talking past one another. Librarians have deep training in the science, philosophy and psychology of information storage and retrieval. Most of the time you think of things like Dewey numbers on library books buts its much more than that. At the dawn of the second internet age (circa 1…

Yes, please tell us your recommendations for informational retrieval / taxonomy systems - what are the current best practices for the different mediums?

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#244

Post by throwaway4837 »

iammjm wrote: post #36

Educational games. Hear me out. The way we teach us basically how we did it 500 years ago. This is stupid, boring and not scalable. We dont have enough teachers, attention span is short, education is costly. So we need something that scales, is fun and involves all types of media plus gamifies education. Think Skyrim or GTA meets MS Encarta

As a kid, the Encarta virtual 3D tours of historical places was extremely fun. I used to spend hours running around and exploring those.

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#245

Post by gault8121 »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #231
iammjm wrote: post #36

Educational games. Hear me out. The way we teach us basically how we did it 500 years ago. This is stupid, boring and not scalable. We dont have enough teachers, attention span is short, education is costly. So we need something that scales, is fun and involves all types of media plus gamifies education. Think Skyrim or GTA meets MS Encarta

I pitched such a thing to a department of education grant program and got rejected. I called it the Meta Educational Environment for Simulation and Gaming (MEESG) (long before FB thought about turning into Meta). The pitch was to create a core open source platform for which subject matter experts could create their own specialized training packages, tied in with a web interface for teachers/students to track progress…

That's basically what I am doing with Quill.org (I'm the founder / executive director). Quill is a platform for learning tools and games - we support six web applications that plug into a common, open source platform where teachers can assign activities to students and monitor results. At the moment, our applications are all focused on literacy, and they are more "tool-like" than "game-like". However, we use AI to assess writing, and the AI creates a game-like experience of writing different responses and getting different pieces of feedback (somewhat like a MUD RPG). We're creating the applications in-house now, and the API is not public, but the hope is to open it up in the future to allow others to launch tools and game on our platform. Quill is now serving more than six million students across the United States, about 12% of all K-12 students.

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#246

Post by projektfu »

quesera wrote: post #206
lotsofpulp wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Especially if you have an SUV or higher car you can easily crawl under. Just unscrew the original plug, screw in a Fumoto valve, and an entire oil change is done in under 20 min, and then you just drop off the old oil at Autozone or whatever. While the oil is draining, you can change the air filters too. Buy the Kirkland brand oil at Costco, and you do not have to trust whoever the mechanic shop hires to bust yo…

Option 1 requirements: - Equipment: wrenches, oil collection pan, oil container for transport to disposal, funnel? - Knowledge: Quality of oils, filters, Oil weights (5W20? 10W30?) - Willingness: To get dirty, to stain the driveway - Time: 30min if all goes well, then time to take waste oil to disposal - Trust: In self - Funds: $20 for oil and filter, assuming disposal is free Option 2 requirements: - Time: 15min, pl…

This can be simplified depending on your car. GM, for example, requires Dexos oil from any manufacturer. Pair that with an OEM filter and you have a 10,000 mile oil change.

The hard part is having the crush washer on hand and remembering to put it on. In my experience, shops have forgotten it too, used the old one, or have over torqued the plug screw. I think this is why many shops aspirate the oil instead.

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#247

Post by unixfg »

eldavido wrote: post #170
mediaman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a partner in a factory and I believe this is an incredibly important area, and the requirements are fairly different than normal "just put it on Confluence" workplaces, in a way that most tech people don't understand and usually completely miss the mark when they're doing product dev. - Your team is out on the floor. Their hands have grease on them. Using tablets sounds great until you're trying to use it with a…

Predictive/preventive maintenance is actually a big thrust behind my current company, Dials. HOAs, which we serve, are run by busy volunteers, yet expected to perform almost insane financial gymnastics, planning 30 years of major component replacement, e.g. common area roofs, piping, asphalt resurfacing. This involves (a) estimating each component's lifetime (total and remaining), (b) getting a cost estimate, and (c)…

This is really compelling!

How will you protect from incorrect estimates, insurance?

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#248

Post by blown_gasket »

tylerlh wrote: post #67

Supply chain/logistics. I've been simultaneously surprised and unsurprised by the relatively minuscule number of people interested in driving technology and change for this space forward compared to other spaces.

Maybe for driving technology specifically the space is small. But for supply chain management there are a number of players: SAP, Oracle, and Kinaxis to name three. There are more than a dozen though.

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#249

Post by atribecalledqst »

ab-dm wrote: post #242
iammjm wrote: post #36

Educational games. Hear me out. The way we teach us basically how we did it 500 years ago. This is stupid, boring and not scalable. We dont have enough teachers, attention span is short, education is costly. So we need something that scales, is fun and involves all types of media plus gamifies education. Think Skyrim or GTA meets MS Encarta

Time to remaster Logical journey of the zoombinis. Such an amazing game.

It's actually been remastered a couple times. Wikipedia says there were remakes in 2001 and 2015.

(Though of course, 2015 was seven years ago... old enough to remaster again?)

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#250

Post by bdw5204 »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #230
iammjm wrote: post #36

Educational games. Hear me out. The way we teach us basically how we did it 500 years ago. This is stupid, boring and not scalable. We dont have enough teachers, attention span is short, education is costly. So we need something that scales, is fun and involves all types of media plus gamifies education. Think Skyrim or GTA meets MS Encarta

Agree, education via a game makes lots of sense. Math is one of those that is perfectly suited since repetition helps to learn it. There have been companies that specilized in educational games in the past yet they are no more. In the late nighties there were a few that were giants. If I remember well Software Toolsworks was one of them. It got acquired but now it's gone. I suspect the reason we don't see more of the…

That's why you'd probably want to target the homeschool market if you had a startup making educational games. Homeschooling seems to be increasingly popular since the pandemic so that's a growing market and one that is probably not as dominated by very religious families as it used to be.
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