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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?

#311

Post by alixanderwang »

Document software design 10x better.

The foundation is flowcharts, with support for individual layers distinguishing levels of abstraction, and scenarios for exploring use-cases. From there:

- Live data. We look at metrics on dashboards but it doesn't put into perspective how they relate to each other. Imagine seeing on your flowchart of servers, that one worker has an anomalous CPU reading, and you can click into that to see the individual readings of the running services on it. (rudimentary version: https://app.terrastruct.com/diagrams/1404897320)

- Automatic generation and sync of diagrams. Having access to sources like AWS account and version control to create and keep in sync diagrams of your infra, db schemas, UML classes, etc.

- Collaborative editing, seamless integrations with written documentation, linking directly to code where appropriate, version control, etc.

So much of software can be better understood visually. Still early on, if you're interested in learning more, https://terrastruct.com. And would love to chat (email in profile) with anyone with ideas.

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

#312

Post by NicoJuicy »

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…

I think Google already tried it with circles

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

#313

Post by asfgjubiu »

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…

I've worked on the same problem and came up with the same solution. My password was "Teapot Dome" from 2016-2018, and it's been "Cottage Cheese" since then. I have just come up with a new password, which I obviously won't share.

This solution doesn't actually work. Maybe the people are mind readers rather than time travelers. Maybe they beat the password out of you and then wiped your memory. Maybe they are time travelers, but it's like Groundhog's Day rather than Back to the Future and they've guessed ten billion passwords until getting it right. Maybe they have an Infinite Improbability Drive and just got really lucky.

Your test can prove that something funky is going on. It can't prove that the something funky is time travel.

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

#314

Post by httpsterio »

rawgabbit wrote: post #151
httpsterio wrote: post #11

I've been mulling over an idea that is essentially a combination of personal ID, secure digital authentication and online communications all baked into one. There's a EU directive instructing on how citizens should be able to identify online with eIDAS. In my country, you can use eIDAS to authenticate in basically any governmental agency portal, but you can't get any eIDAS enabled auth method as a citizen. The curren…

> authenticating is done via bank accounts It occurred to me the USA might do something similar in the future and let the banks authenticate and verify identities. (The $1200 CARES Act stimulus payments were automatically wired to those who previously authorized the IRS to post their tax refunds to their banks.) > actually verify the users Maybe you can harness existing Public Notaries instead of using online banking…

We don't have public notaries as such and it would still 1. be a system that places trust in humans (which is easily exploitable) and 2. not free for the end users.

I mean, I think it's some ten cents per auth through a bank, if you'd have to invite a notary or visit them every time you want to auth, it'd definitely cost more than that.

I was thinking of a combination of biometric ID, physical card with NFC or USB and a pin or a password. Biometric info is hard to spoof, but not entirely impossible which is why ust stealing the ID card or biometric info shouldn't be enough, you'd need some type of password. Once the user provides all three, you'll know that physically that person carries the aforementioned identifications and is like whom they claim. These would be used to encrypt and unencrypt hashes, meaning that other individuals can also use the hashes to make sure they're contacted by or contacting themselves the correct person they meant to.

We'd also need to implement a way to manage permissions for other users to manage our own data. If you're for example physically incapacitated and want your caretaker to be able to access some services, you could add their hashed identity as an allowed entity and decide over which services and features they can see and/or edit.

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

#315

Post by dang »

a1369209993 wrote: post #286
fabianlindfors wrote: post #23

I want to give everyone a digital identity. In some countries (including mine) basically everyone has an e-ID which we use to sign in to things like government services, banks, payment providers and much more. This is absolutely essential to everyday life and many startups are built around it. Unfortunately, many countries don't have useful e-IDs and the ones that do are limited to that one country. I want to create…

How do you plan to insure that your digital identity system can be used for illegal/criminal purposes, such as aiding Jews and other undesirables in evading lawfully authorized detention and relocation (or by said undesirables for said evasion)? (I don't mean to single you out specifically; this is something that any digital identity system needs to deal with. And most of them enthusiastically don't.)

Why have you chosen to express this point in such a trollish way? We've already received complaints about it.

It sounds like you're trying to say something about the danger of such systems being abused by the state in holocaust-like situations, but the wording is so odd that it's unclear what your real intent is.

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

#316

Post by fiblye »

master_yoda_1 wrote: post #285
atom-morgan wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What have you tried so far?

Going to gym, eating salad, skipping lunch

Skipping meals doesn't help you lose weight in most cases. Your body optimizes for the expectation of not having food and stores more energy.

Eating smaller, filling meals helps more. I actually don't know of anyone who's lost weight from salads. Usually they're just left feeling hungry and usually add dressing to compensate (which just gives you completely unfilling calories).

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

#317

Post by jetrink »

majidmir wrote: post #215
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…

How do you know they are not just good mind readers instead of time travelers?

Maybe you could use a tamper-evident security token along with the password. Could be as simple as a fortune cookie. Keep it safe and crack it open at the end of the year to write the fortune next to your password. In the case of a probable time traveler who tells you your password, challenge them to tell you your fortune and open it afterwards to verify.

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

#318

Post by easterncalculus »

joshuamorton wrote: post #231
easterncalculus wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one mentioned opposing viewpoints except you, and only to downplay real-world harassment as a mere difference of opinion. The radicalization occurring on Twitter is encouraging 'adults' to gang up on others (often children) and try to get their lives permanently ruined over ACTUAL differences of opinion, or for vastly disproportionate acts. So yes, we should use the word 'kill' when describing a force that destroy…

> You can express your opinion on Twitter without personal attacks and threats of harassment and violence. This should not be a fringe opinion. I can. I expect that most people can as well. I don't however agree that any opinion should be expressed without consequence. If someone says "we should kill the Jews and reinstate the 3rd Reich", or "The place of blacks is subjugated below whites". This reveals how they see…

I totally agree with the extreme example of nazism or something like that, or most less extreme examples of prejudicial behavior, especially when that person is managing or just in any way talking to others. The problem is that it isn't so cut and dry. Too many of these people either aren't actually doing anything wrong (Some truck driver with his hand out the window) or have done something that is comparatively minimal to what they received (Justine Sacco, for instance). It's not that these people shouldn't be reprimanded, just that it shouldn't be the default for it to happen in this public, permanent, and very often dangerous way.

The narcissism is real, if you're not closing your eyes to it. It's especially obvious when these people doing it have done what they're complaining about themselves. It gets back to the main idea, that you don't have to harass people to get your point across. Even the most egregious reaction, trying to take someone's employment (and most often the ability to support themselves and their dependents) can be done in a way that isn't public and permanent.

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

#319

Post by yissp »

jawns wrote: post #206
mrfusion wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn’t they just tell you tomorrow’s stock prices? Or a future sports score.

As the PROBLEM statement says: > it would be difficult for them to quickly prove their authenticity Yes, you could tell them something that happens tomorrow or the next day. But if time is of the essence and you can't wait until tomorrow, then the Temporal Password helps you _immediately_ demonstrate your authenticity.

What if we generate a random number every, say, 5 minutes and maintain a log of them along with their timestamp. Then the time traveler could just look up a few entries immediately after their destination time and convince people by predicting them in advance. Not immediate but pretty quick.

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

#320

Post by realbarack »

singingwolfboy wrote: post #228

Let’s say you have multiple people who want to share their location with each other, but to different degrees of precision. Some people might be willing to share their street address, while others only want to share the city that they live in. Some only want to say “Northern New Jersey”, or “Southern France”. Some might want to just share their timezone. How do you store this information in a database, in a geographi…

This is one of the points of geohash, right?
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