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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?

#651

Post by OJFord »

vishnumohandas wrote: post #572
OJFord wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice! Are you aware of https://github.com/hooram/ownphotos ? No affiliation, I'm just interested in using something like this, I'm not sure how actively it's being worked on (it was sort of a 'functional demo' last I saw, but not quite usable).

Yes, but it seems like the project was abandoned[1] and the community fork has not had any activity either[2]. More importantly, the lack of a mobile-first experience was a deal breaker for me and my family. [1] https://github.com/hooram/ownphotos/issues/137 [2] https://github.com/Ownphotos/ownphotos

Ah that's a shame, I hadn't seen that, thanks. I'll look forward to trying out yours!

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

#652

Post by fabianlindfors »

dane-pgp wrote: post #241
fabianlindfors wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does this mean that a user can use their identity on two separate sites, and those two sites can't collude to build a shared profile of the user, without the user's permission? That's precisely what it means. User IDs will be unique for each site and I'm hoping to anonymize email addresses as well, similar to what Apple has done for "Sign in with Apple". Some companies might be required by law to collect some PII b…

Thank you for those excellent answers. I do have a couple more questions if you are interested: > [companies'] needs will be vetted before. Is the plan that a single entity offering this centralized product will control not just which users are allowed to have identities, but which companies are allowed to access users' IDs? Presumably there is a somewhat costly process to vetting companies and their requirements, so…

> Is the plan that a single entity offering this centralized product will control not just which users are allowed to have identities, but which companies are allowed to access users' IDs? Presumably there is a somewhat costly process to vetting companies and their requirements, so would companies pay a fixed amount to cover this vetting process, or pay more based on the level of personal information they hoped to receive from users?

That's the plan, yes. The current pricing structure is to let companies pay a monthly price per active user. They would not be able to pay more to get access to more data. As this is early stages, I'm not sure what the vetting process will look like yet. It's mostly there to ensure that the the data the companies request are actually needed for their core business and will not be used for tracking. For example, a company can only request the legal name of a user if the law requires them to know it. This might be true for a bank but not for a dating app.

> What type of verification do you imagine being necessary or available for user identities?

The verification we will be performing is at the level required by some laws, for example Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws. Our goal is to make Pass suitable for fintech companies which have quite stringent requirements. I can also see lighter forms of verification being good enough for other applications, like the Web of Trust model used by PGP.

> Are there any technologies specific to phones that mean this couldn't run as a web app instead?

Yes. Many modern phones have a built-in Hardware Security Module (HSM) which can be used to store and use asymmetric keys securely. Browser storage can't offer the same level of security currently but there have been some interesting developments which might change this, for example WebAuthn.

> So if you can install multiple copies of the app on your (Android) phone, you could have multiple identities on the same device?

I can't really answer this right now as I'm not sure which way we'll go. It will depend on what regulations require and what we can achieve in terms of verification.

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

#653

Post by collyw »

silveroriole wrote: post #645
collyw wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being that you can actually post / see both sides of the debate on one platform. And that isn't the one with censorship policies. You seem to be in agreement that the lack of moderation actually gets us closer to the form of debate that we are after.

I don’t really agree. Like I said, I don’t think you will ever get both sides of an argument there; one side will force the other out eventually. I’d rather have a proliferation of communities which are ‘censored’. Sure, have a forum for racists where non-racists get banned, whatever (although I won’t shed any tears if it gets closed down). If I want to see what racists think, I can go check it out. But I don’t want…

Basically you are in favour of censorship over free speech. History has shown that top be a poor choice.

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

#654

Post by hooby »

Kliment wrote: post #585
hooby wrote: post #561

Would Fremen Stillsuits like in the Dune novels actually be possible? These suits allow to survive for weeks out in the deep desert, by catching and recycling all of the body's lost water. Making sure no perspiration can escape is doable. Filtering the sweat to produce clean, salt-free water should be possible as well - membranes for water desalination do already exist today. To have all the required pumping action p…

Remember the desert is very cold at night. So you don't need to spend that much energy, as long as you can store heat.

An interesting idea...

How much heat a material can store is called thermal mass or heat capacity. One of materials that can store the most heat per kilogram happens to be regular old water.

I wonder if anyone here could do the math of how many kilograms of water would be needed to absorb the day/night temperature changes of a desert and keep a human body inside at an acceptably stable temperature.

I'm kinda afraid the weight would be more than enough to crush any human into a bloody pulp?

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

#655

Post by silveroriole »

collyw wrote: post #653
silveroriole wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really agree. Like I said, I don’t think you will ever get both sides of an argument there; one side will force the other out eventually. I’d rather have a proliferation of communities which are ‘censored’. Sure, have a forum for racists where non-racists get banned, whatever (although I won’t shed any tears if it gets closed down). If I want to see what racists think, I can go check it out. But I don’t want…

Basically you are in favour of censorship over free speech. History has shown that top be a poor choice.

It’s not exactly censorship when you can start your own blog or platform with the exact opposite form of ‘censorship’, is it? Give me a break - someone saying “you can’t post things I think are racist on my website” is not a violation of your human rights, any more than the host of a party saying “you need to leave after what you just said” is dire political censorship akin to burning books.

Bigots of all stripes like to use the goodwill of others and their belief in freedom to say horrible, bigoted things and demand everyone listen to them. But we don’t have actually have to. That’s not what freedom of speech means.

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

#657

Post by Kliment »

hooby wrote: post #654
Kliment wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember the desert is very cold at night. So you don't need to spend that much energy, as long as you can store heat.

An interesting idea... How much heat a material can store is called thermal mass or heat capacity. One of materials that can store the most heat per kilogram happens to be regular old water. I wonder if anyone here could do the math of how many kilograms of water would be needed to absorb the day/night temperature changes of a desert and keep a human body inside at an acceptably stable temperature. I'm kinda afraid t…

The most effective way to store a whole lot of heat in very little mass is to use phase changes - some materials take an enormous amount of energy to transition from solid to liquid and vice versa. This can be used to pack a lot of thermal energy into very little volume with very little temperature change.

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

#658

Post by cyberdrunk »

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…

Isn't it enough if they predict (know) the next lottery numbers?

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

#659

Post by jeremylevy »

hashamali wrote: post #109
jeremylevy wrote: post #91

Automating cloud architecture creation. I'm building a "catalog" of architectures that you could use to create a complete cloud architecture on your AWS, GCP or Azure account in less than one minute. So, for example, you could create a docker-based architecture with CI/CD, auto-scaling, zero downtime deployment, SSL, load-balancing, high availability and MongoDB in less than one minute in your own AWS account. It's l…

Have you considered something like Pulumi for the glue? Love this idea, the ease of Heroku + the flexibility of Kubernetes would be amazing.

Thanks!

Yes! I used Terraform because it was the tool I know best but Pulumi seems very elegant.

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

#660

Post by truckerbill »

chiefmcloud wrote: post #494
satyrnein wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it's not about the word choice of "killing"; it's the seeming implication that "current radicalization" is caused by lack of "understanding" and then leads to "cancel culture" as the true problem. Your mission statement sounds kind of like "I want to win the argument with my current set of beliefs" rather than "I hope through honest and open minded discussion we can discover our own blind spots and reach comm…

It’s definitely been interesting hearing some feedback. There’s a lot of passion about the topic. The problem I’m interested in has nothing to do with winning arguments, more that so many people are quiet, not saying anything, because they aren’t interested in current discussion options, and the huge negative downsides. I will reflect on all the feedback, especially the criticism. I don’t agree that I can divide it b…

To add to this train of thought - the phrase 'cancel culture' has become politicised, hence the perceived split. I agree that were seeing a wave of puritanism and witch-hunt behaviour online, but that much of it is springing from admirable causes like climate change and minority rights. I think the risk of using the phrase is to discount the cause. So that brings up a sticking point in creating a utopic online space, language itself means different things to different people. It's worth thinking about in your project - how do you use a light touch but prevent people from filling the space with newspeak or in-group language?
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