Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#681

Post by funnyfacts365 » Sun, Dec 11, 2016, 1:59 PM UTC

artursapek wrote: post #319

mixedbit wrote: post #161

Global CDN with a fixed monthly cost and a capped bandwidth. For example, pay 100$/month and get up to 1Gb/s, traffic above this limit is dropped. Providers today offer uncapped bandwidth, some, like Amazon, without any cost cap, some, like KeyCDN, allow to set a cost cap, but take the resources off-line when the limit is exceeded.

Why on earth would anyone want their CDN traffic to drop? Rise in traffic usually comes with a rise in revenue - it's a good problem to have.

Unless the traffic increase is a DDoS, then you're spending money on people who are attacking you...

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#682

Post by JoeAltmaier » Sun, Dec 11, 2016, 2:10 PM UTC

jsudhams wrote: post #666

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #562

I do embedded Linux porting. The big job is writing drivers and building the device tree. This would be so much simpler if schematics could be annotated with scrapable clues about pin connections and device parameters (e.g. device tree fragments). Its all derivable from the schematic and chip specs, but that part could be automated almost completely. It would put me out of a job, but better than shooting myself in th…

Will the requester typically provide the datasheets?

Nope. But fortunately most chips have widely available datasheets. Except Chinese knockoffs which can involve lots of sleuthing and black-box testing. Had to write a camera driver for a clone that had spotty support (a poor copy of a better device), took a month to get it right.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#683

Post by make3 » Sun, Dec 11, 2016, 2:17 PM UTC

up_so_floating wrote: post #274

akhilcacharya wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd wait at least a year I'd say closer to four to be safe.

But then you'd have to wait four more. And then four more? Four more after that?

he means trump is much worse with regards to immigration than anyone else in recent years

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#684

Post by NIL8 » Sun, Dec 11, 2016, 2:40 PM UTC

NurAzhar wrote: post #399

Uber for boat in Singapore please Hard to find boat from pier to ship Also cost prohibitive alot of unnecessary middle man

Interesting. I bet this would be useful all over the world. I wonder if there's anything like this available anywhere else. The longer I think on it, the better it sounds.

The biggest hurdle would probably be organized crime. It might sound crazy, but most ports are infested with deeply rooted criminals who are involved with even the most mundane aspects of the import/export arena. Of course, even organized crime can be disrupted with the right tech.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#685

Post by ramuta » Sun, Dec 11, 2016, 3:55 PM UTC

gluggymug wrote: post #641

ramuta wrote: post #635

Not a problem in industry, but rather in society: people rapidly losing jobs due to automation We all know why this is happening. One way to try to "solve" this problem is fighting the change (Luddites), but this doesn't work. Also if people don't have enough income, they stop spending - who's going to buy products and services anymore? Another possible solution would be that companies which automate most of it's wor…

My joke solution is everyone tries to get into politics as a profession. You can't automate politics. It will either achieve UBI or create a hell on earth.

Nice one :)

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#686

Post by luckydata » Sun, Dec 11, 2016, 4:08 PM UTC

flamesnare3 wrote: post #35

chollida1 wrote: post #27

Data management. 1) Cleaning the data as it comes in rather than in batches so we can use it sooner, invalid data is discarded, outlier detection, normalizing inputs etc.... 2) Warehousing of the data with proper indexes so you can perform some advanced queries on unstructured data 3) Some data is sent in bulk at the end of day, some of the data is streamed in fire hose style. How can we preprocess the fire hose data…

I think Palantir provides solutions to this problem

Palantir doesn't really have a product, they write tons of code to put everything together and make it look seamless from the UI but they don't have anything drop in as far as I know.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#687

Post by NPMaxwell » Sun, Dec 11, 2016, 4:10 PM UTC

tajen wrote: post #650

pastullo wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same exact story on my grandparents. Once the healty one is gone, the other one sees a drastic reduction in quality of life as well as life expectancy. The cost incourred for at-home help with a dedicated easter european colf were huge. Might still be a couple of decades away but i can totally see a model where you rent a house robot that takes care of cooking, personal cleaning and limited interaction (no need to ha…

I know I speak to a computer 99% of the day (programming, games, movies, sms, maps, etc), but please kill me before my future son gives me an AI to talk to. I agree with the cooking and showing me movies, but our jobs as sons can't be replaced. On the other hand, if the robot makes snapchats with the elderly, that would be a way to bring our parents back into our lives.

Maybe! :)

But: http://www.wsj.com/articles/toyota-to-sell-cuddly-companion-...

"ELIZA's creator Joseph Weizenbaum thought the idea of a computer therapist was funny. But when his students and secretary started talking to it for hours, what had seemed to him to be an amusing idea suddenly felt like an appalling reality." http://www.radiolab.org/story/137466-clever-bots/

In the meantime, parents need safe food. If anyone goes for this, good luck!

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#688

Post by NPMaxwell » Sun, Dec 11, 2016, 4:11 PM UTC

petra wrote: post #611

NPMaxwell wrote: post #561

As specific organs reduce functioning, some seniors living at home need to revise their recipes to avoid complex collections of foods just as TIAs and other problems reduce their ability to deal with the challenges. To-go food does not work. For some families, hospital-style food may mimic the diet they are accustomed to, but for immigrants, traditional hospital food may be horrific. Older people tend to rely on a ve…

>> There are dietitian-run food delivery services, but not ones that create meals from clients' recipes. The problem is that you need volume for it to make sense. One way to get that is aggregating a few people who want the same recipe. The other way is ordering those meals, frozen, for a bunch of days. In either case, the people to talk to it about it are probably cooks on https://www.josephine.com/ .

Nice! Thanks for the link!

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#689

Post by morgante » Sun, Dec 11, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

sorenvrist wrote: post #678

morgante wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would strongly encourage people to think twice about trying to sell software to lawyers. It's a Sisyphean task. They are, as a rule, extremely anti-technology and conservative. At a previous startup, we had built software which was saving customers many hours a week—yet it was still an uphill battle to get paying approval. If even after all the warnings in this thread you really want to build legal software, focus…

> In general, law and media are two of the worst fields for technology Could you expand on the "media" part?

I could go on for days, but it's generally a low-profit and low-margin business where even the most successful companies are not huge successes.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#690

Post by jpindar » Sun, Dec 11, 2016, 6:23 PM UTC

patmcguire wrote: post #128

ggcdn wrote: post #37

As a structural engineer, I see a good opportunity to make reinforced concrete design software available in a SaaS format. The competition is outdated, clunky, requires local installation and messing about with licenses. Design firms are paying $1000-$3000/year per user/seat for what amounts to a pretty basic app. Unfortunately, there are very few people that understand both computer science and structural engineerin…

I have a friend who works in construction glass. (It's NYC, that's a big market). They ship millions of dollars of complex, custom molded glass every year. Everything's kept track of by emailing excel spreadsheets.

Same with the electronics manufacturing industry, where inventories and BOMs are done in Excel. It is a pain in the ass, time consuming and error-prone. But that's what managers want.