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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?

#51

Post by dewey »

kappuchino wrote: post #28

Making leaking safe(er). After the twitter account of DDOSecrets got shut down (due Blueleaks), this got me thinking: How would you leak / provide data but are not directly attributable. (At least like a retweet - not your tweet, just amplified.). And how to add some resilience and protection to the distribution, since there were indicators that the torrent and download of leaked data was being attacked. So far, I ha…

Not really sure what this is trying to solve. If it's some legitimate leak of public interest then the organizations active in this space often have a tip line / encrypted drop where you can put it.

If it's something that's not of interest to many but you want to put out there for some reason then what's stopping you from uploading it to some random one click hoster and posting the link in random places on the internet?

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

#52

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

amelius wrote: post #49
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't that a po box

No because for example if you order from the same shop multiple times using the same PO Box, then they can link the information from each order.

So you're thinking like a virtual mailing address as a service. You receive and forward people's mail. Seems interesting. Also kind of high risk for the service provider. People will use something like this to buy guns and drugs and other stuff on the black markets. But I guess they do that anyway. You would have to be prepared to deal with a lot of subpoenas to unmask the real mailing addresses. Could be a useful service though. Be sure to charge a lot for it.

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

#54

Post by quickthrower2 »

thecupisblue wrote: post #16

We're writing too much code. So I'm making stuff that will help us write less code. Like a vim-like editor that translates your spec into generated code while you also see it on the go to fix any issues. Think yeoman on generics and steroids.

Like cucumber/gherkin but for production code?

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

#55

Post by lalo2302 »

vekker wrote: post #31

Dreams. I've been journaling my dreams for years and I'm working on an app that makes it easier to (visually) map them out & find patterns: https://oneironotes.com/ I like the idea of accessing other (inner) dimensions during sleep, like an explorer (an "oneironaut"). The problems to overcome are related to capturing and recollecting experiences that only take place in the mind. You asked about the weird stuff...

Wow this is amazing. I've experienced myself lucid dreaming only once, and it was amazing.

Keep it going. If I had an iPad or something better to write on after waking up I'd definitely use it.

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

#56

Post by shezi »

Soil simulation

This is just one part of one of the sillier things I'm working on/thinking about. How can I make a real-time interactive soil simulation work, essentially a big realistic virtual sandbox.

Since this is a side project, it'll go as far as all side projects go. =)

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

#57

Post by ALittleLight »

I wrote a bit about using stylometry to identify the author of a tweet. I'm coming up with additional features to add to this model and testing it with identifying attributes about the author (political affiliation or gender).

https://medium.com/@patriarch_39868/donald-trump-detector-ec...

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

#59

Post by tixocloud »

shostack wrote: post #3

Not sure if this is weird so much as an area of business that not a lot of people think actively about, but get bit by. THE PROBLEM How do you automate and aggregate context across business departments for various forms of activity, and then map that to marketing analytics in a way that gives relevant and sufficient insights beyond just channel or user data? How do you more fully answer the question of "what happened…

I’d love to have a chat further. I have some familiarity with what you’re talking about and can see the value of it.

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

#60

Post by amelius »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #52
amelius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No because for example if you order from the same shop multiple times using the same PO Box, then they can link the information from each order.

So you're thinking like a virtual mailing address as a service. You receive and forward people's mail. Seems interesting. Also kind of high risk for the service provider. People will use something like this to buy guns and drugs and other stuff on the black markets. But I guess they do that anyway. You would have to be prepared to deal with a lot of subpoenas to unmask the real mailing addresses. Could be a useful se…

Well, I would be ok with it if the regular postal service does the translation, and I wouldn't want to support any criminal activity.
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