Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?

#41

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

squirrelicus wrote: post #8

The best advice I can give us to build something for pain you feel. Maybe it's edtech integrations or a part of your workflow or life that needs optimization. If you build something for other people, you'll need user discovery and project management skills up the wazoo if you don't have a team with that expertise. And you're at risk of building Facebook for Cat Owners or something like that. Start with your own pain…

Nearly all the most interesting start ups I’ve seen around me have done this. They identified something that was frustrating and clunky, then picked away at it until there was a useful alternative and then kept iterating.

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?

#42

Post by edoo » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

More abstractly speaking I'd say nearly every problem relating to humans is the general inability to understand exponents. Any constant growth rate is an exponential one and if the doubling rate is on a short enough time span to significantly increase resource pressures then you have a problem. That pattern is the world over. The solution would be a clever way of mass teaching people the consequences of exponents.

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?

#43

Post by mLuby » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

dantheman wrote: post #35

mLuby wrote: post #15

Find ways to get college-age students involved in government (local, national, etc), especially voting. Young people are a large, yet chronically underrepresented demographic. Just because it's true now doesn't mean it'll always be.

Only vote if you're actually willing to understand what the policies are and what is currently being done. Otherwise you end up having people vote based on superfluous surface level details -- e.g., I'd have a beer with them.

That only works if everyone follows it, which they don't for a host of good and bad reasons.

Imagine 100 informed people understand the issue; 60 vote for it and 40 against. But 500 uninformed people like the celebrity who opposes the issue so the final vote is 60 to 540.

At this point, I'd be happy just to see that could-vote demographics are proportional to did-vote demographics. We're nowhere close, and it shows.

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?

#44

Post by decasteve » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 7:43 PM UTC

I like Bucky Fuller’s advice on figuring out what to do:

“The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done—that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.” — Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?

#45

Post by polimorphic » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 8:11 PM UTC

mLuby wrote: post #15

Find ways to get college-age students involved in government (local, national, etc), especially voting. Young people are a large, yet chronically underrepresented demographic. Just because it's true now doesn't mean it'll always be.

You should check out https://www.polimorphic.com -- its a civic media site we built for young people to be informed on what's actually happening in politics (votes, legislation, etc.). Plus we're working with a growing number of college politicial groups and other civic groups. Would be happy to elaborate more on it, if interested

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?

#46

Post by bdcravens » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 8:12 PM UTC

nitishvashistha wrote: post #34

bdcravens wrote: post #24

Graduate college without debt. Find ways to disrupt the college culture to accomplish this.

Do you feel ISAs (income share agreements) are a good way to do that? Or do you think there should be other better ways?

I think it begins with a cultural change: where you go, how you spend your time and money, how you approach education. An ISA is just a different form of debt (and sometimes debt can be leveraged well, but usually it's a default for the lazy)

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?

#47

Post by codingdave » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 8:16 PM UTC

dantheman wrote: post #35

mLuby wrote: post #15

Find ways to get college-age students involved in government (local, national, etc), especially voting. Young people are a large, yet chronically underrepresented demographic. Just because it's true now doesn't mean it'll always be.

Only vote if you're actually willing to understand what the policies are and what is currently being done. Otherwise you end up having people vote based on superfluous surface level details -- e.g., I'd have a beer with them.

You may mean well, but anyone who is discouraging our youth from voting will not get agreement from me. We have a large demographic of older voters who vote they same way they have been for decades, along partisan lines based on dated world views. (And I'm old, so I include myself in this.) We need the youth to vote.

Yes, educated votes are better than uneducated votes. So plan to vote, and plan to learn.

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?

#48

Post by PopeDotNinja » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 8:30 PM UTC

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #31

Are you in an area with homeless people? In my neighborhood, there's a homeless guy named Mike. His wheelchair has been stolen 4 times in the last two months, and he can't walk without it. I was thinking it'd be cool if there was a municipal registration system for wheelchairs, like there are for bikes, that would work for homeless people. Just an idea. No clue how practical it'd be!

Since, my comment got a few upvotes, here's a pic I took of him a few days ago.

https://imgur.com/a/T1Ijqgj

For context, Mike effectively can't walk. He can lean on a wall and sort of push himself along for a bit. But imagine "crawling" along a way, having to take a break every 10 or 20 feet, and then getting blocked by coming up to a window that you can't lean on. And then imagine someone stealing your wheelchair. Talk about messed up.

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?

#49

Post by inflatableDodo » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

Papanek's 'Design for the Real World' might be good inspiration for you.

Here is the pdf - http://playpen.icomtek.csir.co.za/~acdc/education/Dr_Anvind_... - however I'd strongly recommend getting yourself a dead-tree copy of it.

As for problems, can you come up with some sort of device to pop zits that flare up right in the middle of the back? I just nearly dislocated my shoulder trying to deal with one.

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?

#50

Post by gradschool » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 9:04 PM UTC

Desalination is not too big but not too small of a problem to solve. Water shortages are on course to become critical in the coming decades and the social implications are staggering. A group of bright college students surely could devise some sort of method for it even if it's inefficient at first, and then work steadily toward improving it.