tackling communications security and privacy:
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?
#32Software that would be attached to your crypto exchange, and would easily and quickly figure out the tax reporting and implications of each trade or purchase for you personally. Also - Parth Balla here on YC already has this - a nickname feature for your crypto wallet to make sending money more certain and less of a hold-your-breath and hope you didn't get a number wrong moment
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#33I know crypto will be a controversial one, but in terms of potential surely even a skeptic would acknowledge it. Decentralised Finance in particular could take a huge chunk out of retail banking, investment banking and insurance.
OP gave a handful of examples regarding what they consider “positive impact”. You don’t even need to get past the first one (energy usage) for cryptocurrencies to be on the actively negative side of the scale.
I know they can’t be decoupled, but I think smart contracts have more potential than coins or tokens.
There is no reason why whole swathes of saving, lending, derivatives, fx and insurance products couldn’t be implemented as decentralised smart contracts.
I suspect the smart contracts to do all of this would use less energy than a single office block.
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#34self driving cars could save the world from millions of deaths per year and reduce stress and wasted time from sitting in traffic in cities like LA/NYC
I think you're spot on. Self driving software seems to me like it will handle the vast majority of driving situations much better than humans could within the 5 year horizon OP is asking about.
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#35self driving cars could save the world from millions of deaths per year and reduce stress and wasted time from sitting in traffic in cities like LA/NYC
Interestingly, I thought like you some years ago. But since then, I realized that, nah, we just need to make cities that don't require cars at all.
I'm not against self driving cars, they'll totally save millions of lives. But we must not make the mistake to build our society around the fact that self driving cars are a thing. We must build our future around the fact that any city should be livable without a car.
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#36Software that would be attached to your crypto exchange, and would easily and quickly figure out the tax reporting and implications of each trade or purchase for you personally. Also - Parth Balla here on YC already has this - a nickname feature for your crypto wallet to make sending money more certain and less of a hold-your-breath and hope you didn't get a number wrong moment
It'd be convenient for cryptobros, but I'm not really seeing how pushing crypto will have "positive impact" in the OP's definition. It's a libertarian capitalist concept, and I'm not open to debate about it because I've yet to see anyone use crypto for anything but a way to make money.
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#37non-profits need to write all sort of reports to stakeholders to justify their funding, etc. Software that would make this easy, or otherwise make that problem go away or smaller on a global scale, should have huge positive impact: - increase positive impact of all non-profits. - improved feebackloop should also make quality better (less funds to bad non-profits that write great documents). Seems to be a problem wher…
Having worked for a non-profit myself, I agree that there are plenty of areas to optimize...and what you noted is only one of them. At least at the non-profit where i worked, there are tons of people who do it for good of humanity, but who are...let me state as kindly as i can: not very efficient. They're intelligent people and who have big hearts, but often get in their own way to achieving their goals. So, yeah, making better software tools and systems for many aspects for non-profits will certainly (100%!) help make a more positive impact on the world.
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#38non-profits need to write all sort of reports to stakeholders to justify their funding, etc. Software that would make this easy, or otherwise make that problem go away or smaller on a global scale, should have huge positive impact: - increase positive impact of all non-profits. - improved feebackloop should also make quality better (less funds to bad non-profits that write great documents). Seems to be a problem wher…
Recently the city that I live was hit by pretty bad landslides and floods - some folks organized how to distribute donations to support centers, but as there was no tool for that they used a public google sheet. At some points there were dozens of people using it at the same time. Luckily no one vandalized it
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#39You're asking people to give away their billion-dollar startup ideas...
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#40self driving cars could save the world from millions of deaths per year and reduce stress and wasted time from sitting in traffic in cities like LA/NYC
I think you're spot on. Self driving software seems to me like it will handle the vast majority of driving situations much better than humans could within the 5 year horizon OP is asking about.
> Self driving software seems to me like it will handle the vast majority of driving situations much better than humans could within the 5 year horizon OP is asking about.
I remember this being said as far as a decade ago, and still, Teslas from 2022 are emergency braking on the highway.