I'd recommend you to have a look at https://80000hours.org/ or at least their job boards: https://80000hours.org/job-board/
They focus on the very problem you're asking about.
Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
71–80 of 260 posts
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure if dropping all my essential software counts as positive, though.
AFAIK most of it works with Wine nowadays.
I still get mails for bugs that I and dozens of other people already submitted working patches for over a decade ago. Let me know when drawing tablet pen pressure finally works correctly in a released build.
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#73Software to quickly and easily determine the tax implications of crypto purchases and trades.
How does this lead to positive impact?
I guess the argument is that crypto is the future, which I would not agree with, but if you actually think that crypto will be _the way_ in which the world will run in 50 years, then I guess a lot of crypto-related software will bring positive impact.
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#74I'm going to be cynical. Energy usage: Software can't fix this; rewriting your workload more efficiently doesn't matter if during that rewrite, a hundred companies wrote workloads that cost a hundred times more power did. The issue is that electricity is too cheap. Raise the cost of electricity and it will force the big consumers of electricity to use it more efficiently. Also ban proof-of-work blockchain technology.…
I guess it depends on what OP means by Energy usage. I thought it was more about clean energy than about the energy usage of individual workloads. And there are certainly opportunities for software in clean energy. Things like improving site selection, grid optimizations, and the like. Although a lot of it is probably going to be hardware side.
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#75Easy mode for Kubernetes
Nice idea - I wonder whether a Duolingo-style gradual-progression approach to learning Kubernetes would make for an effective educational environment.
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#76Something like YouTube for learning videos, only. Spreading _solid_ knowledge about everything all over the world and people will be able to improve their societies, no matter where they are. That will probably have a huge impact.
I believe there are already such instances, I believe https://nebula.app/ is one of them.
The problem is that this does not change the dynamic of what people want to watch. The problem is not necessarily a lack of ways to find and filter such content, but rather that this is not appealing for broad audiences.
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#77So many communication platforms are proprietary walled gardens these days. Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Discord, and so on. Their incentives do not align with what's best for their users, or society in general. We absolutely need open solutions become the standard dominant medium for communicating. If Matrix and Mastodon become as easy to use as their proprietary counterparts, they could undo much of the harm done by ou…
Do you not expect people to self select into the same divisive social networks no matter the communication platform that they are using? How does offering yet another platform for them to do so undo any of the harm already caused?
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean like this https://blog.tjcx.me/p/40k-fantastic-startup-idea ?
I remember reading that post a while back. I was surprised the author gave up after he didn't find doctors who would pay for access. The post says he met 10 doctors in the bay area and when none of them became a paying customer, he shut his project down. If you really think you are making a dent in the worlds health situation, why give up so fast?
10 seems like such a small number. Was he was getting specific feedback that caused him to shut it down? Like were there some sort of legal liability issues or something that made it something they weren't interested in?
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#79Near complete erosion of personal privacy and absolutely astounding levels of ignorance of that in general populace is a massive issue that continues to reshape the society is very alarming ways. Courtesy of Google and Facebook.
So both technical and non-technical counter-measures are dearly needed. From federated messaging systems to the privacy-oriented legislation, every little thing will help.
It is an uphill battle though. This much is obvious.
Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
AFAIK most of it works with Wine nowadays.
I still get mails for bugs that I and dozens of other people already submitted working patches for over a decade ago. Let me know when drawing tablet pen pressure finally works correctly in a released build.
> Let me know when drawing tablet pen pressure finally works correctly in a released build.
It will happen in a week after the documentation for the hardware is released.