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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?

#341

Post by drusepth »

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 guarantee you I'm going to forget a password in 12 months if I never have to type it in anywhere or use it on any regular basis.

Can I please come up with my password and submit it to the Temporal Password Registry immediately -- and just have it "go public" on December 31 of that year? It'd also be a nice way for me to check back in throughout the year, logged in as me (the only person who should be able to see my password for this year), just to verify what I thought was the password was correct... in the event of needing it.

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

#342

Post by dzink »

etherio wrote: post #38

Knowledge. Working on building a self-hosted app that would alow you to save, organise and search your knowledge in one center. It would contain information like notes, bookmarks (it would download the links contents) and in general provide a programmable, opensource interface to preserve the info you'll find useful and even sync with external apis to save your online presence locally (think reddit posts, hn links, e…

Same here.

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

#343

Post by _AzMoo »

killjoywashere wrote: post #336

Teaching machines to diagnose cancer, because without that, there's no way we are going to solve cancer generally. There just aren't enough pathologists. Harder that going to Mars, probably easier than world peace. Definitely involves an enormous amount of data. Like, a non-trivial fraction of world-wide storage.

Why don't we train more pathologists?

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

#344

Post by chiefmcloud »

aahhahahaaa wrote: post #321
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 a problem with this is that if you're at all familiar with how someone speaks or writes you can figure out who they are rather easily. So there's another weird problem (probably not so hard though): translating conversation within the same language in a way that doesn't lose meaning but obscures identifying patterns.

Or multiple translations. This is a great idea that I’ve considered but want to leave for V2. V1 is maybe disappoingly simpler, but at least it would mean that your boss 10 years from now isn’t reading through your post history

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

#345

Post by joshuamorton »

easterncalculus wrote: post #318
joshuamorton wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mini…

> permanent

Can you give an example of incorrect permanent punishment? Sacco found a job almost immediately. The truck driver may have a more difficult time, but not because this event will follow him, but because the labor market at the moment is shitty. (And to be clear here I'm not saying what happened to him was right or just).

> The problem is that it isn't so cut and dry.

Sure but now we're in a very fuzzy area. We're no longer saying that public shaming is always wrong, but that there are situations where, in your judgement, the scope is misapplied. Those are two very different situations, especially if you're willing to acknowledge that your perception of the severity of some action may indeed be different than the actual effect of that action.

> The narcissism is real, if you're not closing your eyes to it.

I still don't buy this. People not being self aware is narcissism, but not in the way that you seem to be meaning, which is more like that the activism is performative and not genuine.

Not to say that there aren't people who are performative. Lots of social media activism is, but in many ways so is stuff like signing petitions, and that doesn't get a bad rap.

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

#346

Post by coronadisaster »

drusepth wrote: post #341
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 guarantee you I'm going to forget a password in 12 months if I never have to type it in anywhere or use it on any regular basis. Can I please come up with my password and submit it to the Temporal Password Registry immediately -- and just have it "go public" on December 31 of that year? It'd also be a nice way for me to check back in throughout the year, logged in as me (the only person who should be able to see my…

There's also password managers. But with all this Apple clipboard non-sense, I don't know if it is safe to use one.

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

#347

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #211
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking specifically about harmony in a musical context as being very western.

Well, the point still applies. The small integer ratios of harmony apply even to the rhythms of gamelan. And, of course, octaves are more-or-less universal across cultures.

This starts to get silly.

"Small integer ratios" apply to huge numbers of natural phenomena, because "small integers" and "ratios" are properties of the world we live in. Pointing out that "harmony is another example of small-integer ratios" seems fairly devoid of content to me, especially when the primary user of musical harmony has long abandoned those pure integer ratios to allow modulation and other desired compositional techniques.

Octaves are not universal across cultures. Byzantine music has no octave equivalence, for example. There was even a paper cited here on HN recently showing lack of octave awareness in different cultures (the paper may have had some flaws, but was interesting).

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

#348

Post by mkl »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #211
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking specifically about harmony in a musical context as being very western.

Well, the point still applies. The small integer ratios of harmony apply even to the rhythms of gamelan. And, of course, octaves are more-or-less universal across cultures.

From a story a couple of weeks ago, octaves, while common, seem to be learned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624596

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

#349

Post by DavidPeiffer »

hazeii wrote: post #149
zamadatix wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.mouser.com/Electromechanical/Encoders/_/N-39xfc?... ?

Thanks, looked at them. Can't get the resolution we need for any vaguely feasible price though.

Brainstorm here - could you put a number of lower resolution encoders firmly on the same shaft? The theory would be they'll all pulse on slightly different but consistent phases.

Simple example, an encoder is capable of 60 degree resolution. I'll mount 5 of these which will all have some variation in phase, and I'd average out to having 12 degree resolution, with variation that could be modeled statistically.

Conceptually I would have a shaft with n different key slots, one per encoder. This would ensure there will be variation as opposed to having the phase be super similar, such as +/-1 degree in the above low resolution example.

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

#350

Post by eitland »

baxtr wrote: post #136
eitland wrote: post #103

Getting time to do anything in between kids, work and whatever else is expected from me is the actual hard part for me. The technical aspect is mostly fun in my case :-)

If you ever find out, let me know. The only solution I’ve found is: late at night!

That never worked for me, I always needed some sleep around midnight. Usually I used to be up around 0400 but the last few months it has been more like just before the kids wake up.

Holiday started on Friday afternoon and this morning I woke up 20 or so minutes ago, around 0230, but I will probably sleep some more around 06-08 to be able to do anything meaningful afte4 my kids get up.

(And that is probably a good tip: If late nights doesn't work for you,try very early in the morning.)

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