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Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

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Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#331

Post by BaitBlock »

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Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#332

Post by TACIXAT »

monkeydust wrote: post #287

Building a VR application that a domain professional could use to uncover insights from high dimensional data. The goal being to prove that doing this in VR beats 2D screen or 3D plot on 2D screen.

I'm curious to hear what your approach is and how this turns out. I've heard offhand (at a university) that 3d UIs had performed more poorly than 2d every time they had tried. I guess this is not necessarily user interfaces though. There may be some academic research on this worth looking up (maybe not though because people don't often post negative results).

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#333

Post by erikbrodch »

Currently at YC's startup school, trying to solve the unemployment and underemployment problem autistic and Aspergers people experience. Currently validating assumptions and it looks like a freelancing platform for autistic people is the most promising direction. Started accepting application from potential autistic people: https://www.spectroomz.com/work-from-home

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#334

Post by joelthelion »

I've been meaning to improve "news" for a number of years now, with limited success so far. The current news industry is broken beyond repair: all you get are bite-sized irrelevant factoids. A good news service would be:

- Relevant to you and your interests...

- ... but diverse enough to feed your intellectual curiosity

- Delivered in a timely fashion: apart from once a year big events, most things can wait for a few days, no need to require you to read the news every day

- Include some analysis to allow you to see the big picture

When I started a few years ago, I thought naively that a little machine learning should do the trick. But the problem is actually quite complex. In any case, the sector is ripe for disruption.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#335

Post by tmamic »

VectorLock wrote: post #131
tmamic wrote: post #43

Dental treatments, besides being very expensive, are often (up to 28%) unnecessary. This happens because no-one keeps dentists in check. I am trying to make dental treatment and diagnosis reviews easy, cheap, reliable and fast.

What kind of treatments make that 28% "unnecessary?" Regular cleanings too frequently?

It depends, here they say mostly fillings. But there is only so much implants you can sell to a person, and acceptance is lower.

Research that showed the 28% figure: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3036573

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#336

Post by tmamic »

iends wrote: post #97
tmamic wrote: post #43

Dental treatments, besides being very expensive, are often (up to 28%) unnecessary. This happens because no-one keeps dentists in check. I am trying to make dental treatment and diagnosis reviews easy, cheap, reliable and fast.

Are you in the United States? If so, how do you get past the regulatory hurdles that is each state’s dental board comprised entirely of dentists? EDIT: Sorry, I missed the reviews part. Do you mean easily getting a second opinion based on diagnostic imaging?

I call it "verified diagnosis". We use game theory to extract the truth. Think prisoner's dilemma for dentists.

Edit: Not in US, but building planning to launch there. You can't practice dentistry in US if you haven't got US diploma. However, diagnostic dental work (at least in some states) is exception to this.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#337

Post by asdff »

dabreegster wrote: post #218

Creating a [traffic simulation]( https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/#ab-street ) that's both realistic enough to generate results meaningful in the real world, but easy enough to use that anybody living in a city could use it to experiment with some change to cycling or transit infrastructure. Some of the problems hiding in there: - Getting a representation of a city that cleanly divides paved areas into distinc…

I think a good way to define a bus running faster is to perhaps measure the average change in eta between any two stops across all stops per day, in other words the mean pairwise difference between original and changed routes. then maybe stratifying that for peak, off peak, evening, night, morning, however granular you'd want to go.

you can then think about optimizing routing for commuters, or late night service around a random event with increased traffic, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#338

Post by Operyl »

pjbk wrote: post #256
sgtnoodle wrote: post #247

I'm helping to build a scalable system for delivering high value and life saving medical supplies to hard to reach places via autonomous aircraft. The system is currently operating in Rwanda and Ghana, and aggressively expanding over the next couple years. Specifically, I spend a lot of time thinking about and writing embedded software. The aircraft is fully autonomous and needs to be able to fly home safely even aft…

Zipline?

Given that the two markets he listed are the markets I know Zipline is in, I’m willing to bet yes.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#339

Post by johnmorrison »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #247

I'm helping to build a scalable system for delivering high value and life saving medical supplies to hard to reach places via autonomous aircraft. The system is currently operating in Rwanda and Ghana, and aggressively expanding over the next couple years. Specifically, I spend a lot of time thinking about and writing embedded software. The aircraft is fully autonomous and needs to be able to fly home safely even aft…

Are you working on Zipline [1] ?

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEbRVNxL44c

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#340

Post by johnmorrison »

joelthelion wrote: post #334

I've been meaning to improve "news" for a number of years now, with limited success so far. The current news industry is broken beyond repair: all you get are bite-sized irrelevant factoids. A good news service would be: - Relevant to you and your interests... - ... but diverse enough to feed your intellectual curiosity - Delivered in a timely fashion: apart from once a year big events, most things can wait for a few…

Oooh, this is a great one. You're absolutely right "the sector is ripe for disruption"

Your list of points is great, if you can figure out a way to deliver a service like that it would be incredible.

I think one of the biggest challenges for current publications is the tie to advertising model - advertising business model forces products to decrease in quality over time. Same thing happening to Google and Facebook, but super apparent in news sites. They're fucking awful these days, I can't read a single article without ten huge popups and a paywall.

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