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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?

#671

Post by tobr »

filleduchaos wrote: post #639
tobr wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m very sorry, but I don’t understand where you’re coming from. The original proposal seems to be this: You publish a document. The platform takes care of presenting it. One criticism was: No, people want to control the styling of what they publish. My counter argument is: There are many successful platforms that don’t allow people to style the content they publish, and people seem to be fine with that. Again, assum…

> The original proposal seems to be this: You publish a document. The platform takes care of presenting it. And with a language that explicitly does not allow styling, how exactly is "the platform" that takes care of presenting it going to render anything but a single, default style for all content without...reinventing styling? > One criticism was: No, people want to control the styling of what they publish. No, one…

I’m starting to feel silly for continuing this thread. I will just conclude with my best understanding of how we are talking past each other.

I think I understand that you are imagining a middleman to be “the platform” even in the context of NAVI/ALFI. I understood NAVI itself to be this platform; much like the Facebook app allows you to publish and browse Facebook content with very little variation in the styling of different content, so NAVI might allow you to browse and perhaps create ALFI content with little variation in styling. You are comparing all the content within Facebook and others to the content on the rest of the web, while I’m talking about how content within a platform doesn’t need to be visually distinct for the platform to be appealing to publishers and readers. You’re thinking of the web as the “platform”, Facebook etc as the “creators” on the platform, and you are grouping people who publish and read on Facebook as “end-users”. I’m thinking of Facebook as the platform, people who publish things on Facebook as creators, and people who read the things published as the end-users.

Sorry in advance if I’ve misrepresented what you’re saying, but this is the best I can do in explaining why we’re unable to understand one another.

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

#672

Post by vidanay »

shezi wrote: post #484
vidanay wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mechanics or chemistry?

Mechanics. The virtual building aspect is in the foreground.

The main reason I asked was because I recently saw a show where a scientist was studying the chemical composition of soil under decomposing animals. They are trying to determine the situations under which fossils were formed since it is extraordinarily rare for remains to actually form a fossil.

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

#673

Post by davidajackson »

silveroriole wrote: post #526
davidajackson wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if there's a solution but in my mind the problem is 'likes' or 'retweets'. Most networks create an incentive to angle only for those at all costs (how else does one become an "influencer"?)--whether it be saying something ridiculous or not. This is one thing that snapchat never did that I appreciate. It's really unhealthy for people because it's essentially like a social credit score (spread across many…

We already have those social networks. They’re called forums. (I know some introduced likes but they don’t mean much, since your post is still just as likely to be seen as everyone else’s.)

I'm thinking more closed off than forums. And more feed oriented.

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

#674

Post by tyingq »

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…

The typical plot device is that they predict published events for you. News, horse races, weather, stock prices, direct quotes, etc.

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

#675

Post by BoiledCabbage »

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…

> But maybe there’s a better way of communication, something new, that lets you talk with people you actually know.

Isn't Facebook's newsfeed populated with people you know? If so, why will this be any better?

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

#676

Post by devchris10 »

A prediction/promise competition to increase accountability in general.

Politicians/companies spew words and we tend to accept them bc they're "authorities." I believe the best way to increase "skin in the game", accountability, and humble expertise is to predict and have your predictive performance be visible.

There's prediction markets to trade real money with but none that I've seen that ranks your performance against others.

I'm building a platform where it's free to enter/submit predictions in categories of interest. Top ranked players will receive prizes.

I think once players can measure themselves against "authorities" (whose public predictions will be scraped), both will become more accountable.

After predictions, I aim to work on "promises" since they both increase future skin in the game.

If you've read this far, you should consider joining :) - https://oraclerank.com

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

#677

Post by john4534243 »

Addono wrote: post #578

Verified location using GPS. Problem: Currently, users (or attackers) can easily manipulate the location provided to an app on a phone. Solution: Use raw measurements from positioning sattellites to check if the location reported by a user actually lines up with the measurements of their phone. Why is it hard? - Lack of documentation, standardization and support on collecting raw measurements on phones. - Processing…

> Currently, users (or attackers) can easily manipulate the location provided to an app

This is respecting users privacy and its a feature.

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

#678

Post by akrymski »

dougskinner wrote: post #669
akrymski wrote: post #662

A new Web. Today's web is a collection of applications that largely provide a frontend for browsing data. The applications and data they contain are silos: there is no easy way to separate the data from functions and compute across datasets. Every application must (re)invent its own UI for querying and displaying data. But if the web is actually a collection of datasets, why don't we have a web browser for consuming…

Sounds like you want website to embrace the semantic web: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web

Not quite. The semantic web focuses on normalizing all data into a single ontology, which is great for computers but does nothing to standardize the user interface side of accessing data. Needless to say, it also hasn't gotten far.

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

#679

Post by sameerds »

dave_sid wrote: post #610
jliptzin wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be good enough to know that there is at least one person somewhere who is actually from the future.

Yes but on that case the earlier suggestion of just asking them for a stock market prediction would be good enough without implementing the password system.

But then you have to wait for the stock market prediction to come true. Instead, since you already know your temporal password for the year, the proof would be immediately available.

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

#680

Post by sameerds »

sean2 wrote: post #549
mmazing wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, let's presume that some dinosaurs in the past were really smart, and evolved some thinking skills before the asteroid wiped them all out. They just so happened to evolve the same scheme. How do you prove to them that you're from the future?

I climb back into my cardboard box (with "time machine" scrawled on the side); jump forward 1 year, ask them what last year's temporal password was; go back one year and tell them.

Did it work?
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