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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?

#691

Post by BoiledCabbage »

web007 wrote: post #486

How can we document "human society" in 1000 pages or less? I've been casually researching for a while, and will eventually write a guide on going from zero to the moon. Step one is survival, basics of hunting, first aid and farming sort of stuff. That volume would end around homesteading and self-sufficient living. Volume two would be establishing society in larger groups than a family unit. Things like job specializ…

Cool idea - few questions: How many volumes are there? Would be cool to see the full list.

The first to volumes are very goal purpose driven and so fit will together. The third feels very grab bag and likely should be split up more.

You'll also likely want to cover on schools of thought, the scientific method and whatnot.

An alternate volume 3a might be on mass production of food (enabling greater human capital). Large scale agriculture and the chemistry and botany that enables it. Some amount of animal farming is likely required.

3b could cover the communication and transportation networks necessary to distribute that food. Both the engineering, infrastructure and tech behind it.

At some point you can shift to covering, manufacturing and mass production - which enables all the small products needed for so many fields. The handles, washers, lenses,...

Then final shift to digital and everything that rolls out from there.

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

#692

Post by biztos »

crabl wrote: post #513

Existing mediums for note-taking (Evernote, Notion, Roam Research) are not sufficient for doing knowledge work over long periods of time. The functions these incumbents serve are primarily as “stores of knowledge” that we save because it’s interesting in the moment but never read through or “scratchpads” that we use once and never get rid of, which end up cluttering our information space like a junk drawer full of sh…

I’m not working on this problem actively but about once a year I go into a frenzy of brainstorming about it.

What I wish for is a useful melding of easy stuff like Notes.app, structured stuff like a custom database, and my reams of notes taken on physical paper. Oh and scrapbooks, web clippings, etc.

At the end of every brainstorm I throw up my hands, say this is too complicated to ever be worth doing, and resolve to change the way I gather and generate information.

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

#693

Post by vekker »

pks016 wrote: post #385
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...

So relatable. I have notes of most of my dreams from last 2-3 months(mainly) and some from last few years. I might sign up. Does it only work with browser or any offline thing?

Browser, desktop, mobile, ... I'm supporting all of them because of my typical process starts with taking sloppy notes on my mobile phone and then editing & annotating them on my desktop...

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

#694

Post by vekker »

lalo2302 wrote: post #55
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.

Thanks! Definitely, making lucid dream induction a little bit easier for me was one of the main drivers to work on the application

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

#695

Post by biztos »

ricg wrote: post #681
elric wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds interesting, though it seems similar to Zettelkasten in its outset. Does this mean you're working on something concrete?

I'm tackling this problem, too! My focus is on data-longevity so everything is based on simple files and folders. The idea is that the app "understands" the structure of the content. A bit like a combination of a notebook, Xcode, a calendar, and Wolfram Alpha :) Bi-directional links and timestamps are working already so implementing a "Zettelkasten" should be possible with the current version. If you're interested, t…

I very much like the idea of the hierarchy and the content just being the file system.

I’m less excited about the connection to Zettelkasten because that smells of fad.

If there were an app that would make useful sense out of a few tens of gigabytes of stuff kept in a plain folder hierarchy, I’d be a potential customer. In a way Dropbox tries to do this, and it’s better than nothing (for me) but I still wish for some kind of magical portal into my messy attic.

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

#696

Post by Addono »

john4534243 wrote: post #677
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.

Hmm, I see your concern. I'm pretty big on privacy myself, so I feel I should be able to answer this in a satisfying way.

Most importantly, this always requires the user's concent. On Android you still need the same location permissions as for normal GPS location positioning. Hence, as a user you're always free to reject location permissions same as before.

I have to admit, this tech can also be used for evil purposes. For now, not all phones support collecting raw measurements - either hardware or software support is lacking, but in the future if some entity could force you to have your location verified, then having you cannot lie about it anymore.

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

#697

Post by BoiledCabbage »

mnemonicsloth wrote: post #290

Writing a computer program is often the best way to convince yourself that you really understand a problem. And an already-written computer program is often a good way to document the behavior of a complex system because you can play with it to see what happens in all the edge cases. So I'm writing curricula that use computer programs as the primary teaching tool. One is for computer science, where the idea is that a…

Brilliant!

I was just ranting on HN about the need for this two weeks ago. It seems like the inevitable end game for teaching of hard sciences (and possibly other fields). One inspiration (besides the book you referenced) is there first few posts of "An Intuitive Explanation of Quantum Mechanics".

Here is a great example[1] where he describes QM as essentially a computational process and does everything just shy of writing down the code. That specific page is from the series here [2].

And from reading this I realized how much easier many concepts would be to grasp if you could just read the objective source code of the description and not have to try to interpret messy English or imprecise notations.

1. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5vZD32EynD9n94dhr/configurat... 2. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/apbcLXz5zB7PXfgg2/an-intuiti...

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

#698

Post by vekker »

baxtr wrote: post #126
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...

Is there a proven way to remember your dreams? I’ve read that we dream every night but I usually can’t remember nothing.

In addition to the tips of the other commenters:

- The #1 way to remember more dreams is to be interested in them! The only personality trait correlated with high dream recall is "openness to experience" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience#Dream_r...). If you want to remember dreams, first consider WHY you want to remember them. Hone into that curiosity and strengthen it.

- Second best tip I can think of is: more sleep! REM periods get longer in the later cycles of your sleep, meaning a higher chance of dreams.

- Also, if you really really want to recall dreams (and perhaps induce lucid ones) and you don't mind being tired the day after, try interrupting your sleep at ~90 min intervals (the average length of a sleep cycle) with a (silent) alarm clock - or raise a baby :)

- Finally, quit smoking weed if applicable, as it suppresses REM sleep ;-)

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

#699

Post by jborichevskiy »

Developing better, more humane environments for hanging out and spending time online:

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/cozyroom

And figuring out how to make it easier to write and develop ideas through blogs:

https://jborichevskiy.com/plan/#jborichevskiy-com

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

#700

Post by jmcqk6 »

muzani wrote: post #2

I'm trying to find a way to generate stories using tropes as the building blocks. There's a sample at https://random-character-generator.com/ There's an unreleased version, which focuses more on how to portray characters, rather than just what they are. For example, instead of saying "energetic", they'll be pacing about a bit. I might just pivot it into a story/plot tracker for writers, and use it to fill out the bla…

I've thought about how systems like this could be used to greatly enhance the world of RPG's. Being able to generate a full back story and personality for every NPC would be fantastic, but only a start.

Then there could be an idea of 'atom' of information that uses models to spreading via NPCs.

There is just so much I know that could be done with this, but I'm guessing hasn't been because it takes more computation than I realize. Or maybe there just hasn't been the effort put into it. I'm hoping it's the latter.

Video game graphics seem to be providing diminishing returns for the game experience compared to depth of storyline/world building. Gamers will not care as much about how a game looks when it is very engaging due to the other elements. But it seems like those other elements are constantly undervalued by game makers.

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